For some historical perspective, here’s 2013’s version (featuring Jake Johanssen), 2012’s version (Brett Mooneyham was the feature pitcher) and 2011’s version (Nathan Karns the feature pitcher) of this post specifically for Auburn/Short-A. Had we done this series in 2014, we likely would have featured Reynaldo Lopez, who had a 0.75 ERA in 7 starts and 36 innings.

A caveat before starting this post (and we’ll say this same thing in the GCL post): this is short-season ball, so nobody’s got more than a few dozen innings. So yes this is absolutely going to be some “Small Sample Size” analysis. Which in some cases is unfair to the player (to the good or to the bad). It is what it is.

Auburn starters. The rotation started the season with several “tandem” starter pairs, not quite going to a full A/B starter set but getting relatively close. Here’s an overview of the 12 starters used in 2015, starting with the original starters, going all the way to the rehab spot starts.

Robbie Dickeyhad two bad starts in Hagerstown before getting dumped back to Auburn in time to get the ball on opening day. From there the jury is kind of out: for the entire year: 6.65 ERA, 16/17 k/bb in 23ip (6 starts). He was incredibly wild and then didn’t pitch after 7/25/15, accumulating just 23 IP on the year. Was he hurt? There was no record of a D/L trip, just an assignment back to XST after a while. All in all, a pretty disappointing season for our 2014 4th round pick. Where does he go from here? Is the team just being too impatient with him, yanking him from Hagerstown after just a few innings? Outlook for Next Season: attempting the Low-A rotation again.

Jefry Rodriguezbounced between Short-A and Low-A again this season, starting in Hagerstown but pitching most of the year in Auburn. At the end of the season, he led Auburn in both IP and starts. All told; 4-10 with a 5.42 ERA between the two levels. While he maintained a 2-1 K/BB ratio in Short-A, he was nearly 1/1 in Low-A (27/25 K/BB in 42.2 low-A innings). The team likes him as a starter … but this is the 2nd year in a row he’s posted a 6+ ERA in low-A. He’s still young though (he turned 22 mid-season) so I can see him repeating his 2015 season; in the Low-A rotation. If he struggles again though, I think it may be time to move him to the bullpen and look at converting him to a late-innings reliever. He can definitely strike guys out (67 Ks in 68 Short-A innings against college competition), so perhaps there’s a new stage in his career if he can’t figure out starting. Outlook for Next season: Low-A rotation.

Erick Feddethrew 8 effective starts in Auburn, going 4-1, 2.57 ERA in Short-A Auburn with 36/8 in 35ip (8 starts), 2.60 fip, .346 babip. He then got bumped up to Hagerstown where he finished out the season. See Low-A write-up for more. Outlook for Next season: Low-A rotation to start.

Matt Crownoverwent 1-4, 3.81 ERA in Short-A with 34/9 K/BB in 49.2 ip (13 app, 10 starts), 3.40 fip, .301 babip. His whip was decent on the year (1.17), mostly due to his great K/BB ratio (4/1). Nothing bad but nothing mind blowing out of Crownover’s numbers in Short-A. Not a bad return for an under-slot ACC lefty starter. I see him competing for the Low-A rotation; there’s no reason not to keep him moving up as a college draftee from the ACC. Outlook for Next season: Low-A rotation competition, likely in the pen.

Joan Baezbounced around the system a bit in 2015, getting 5 starts in Auburn to the tune of a 7.13 ERA. See GCL write-up for more.

McKenzie Millsgot hit hard in 4 appearances in Auburn before spending the rest of the season int the GCL. See GCL write-up for more.

Taylor Guilbeauwent 3-3, 3.54 mostly in Short-A after starting briefly in the GCL with 31/9 K/BB in 51 ip (11/10 starts) .2.89 fip, .356 babip. His FIP looks solid based on his competition but he may get bumped to the bullpen to focus on being a lefty reliever thanks to the large number of arms in the system. I put him behind his fellow 2015 draftees Crownover and Hearn in this regard thanks to his senior sign status and low club investment (fairly or otherwise; it is what it is). Outlook for Next season: Low-A rotation competition, likely in the pen.

Taylor Hearnwent 1-5, 3.56 in Short-A with a 38/13 K/BB in 43ip (10/10 starts), 3.40 fip, .346 babip. Hearn joined his fellow lefty first 10 round starters in the Auburn rotation a couple of weeks into the short season and was completely effective, averaging nearly a K/inning with decent control. He’s done nothing to jeopardize his advancement for 2016 and should compete for a low-A rotation gig. Outlook for Next season: Low-A rotation competition.

Grant Bornewent 1-4, 3.59 in Short-A with 32/7 K/BB in 47.2 ip (15 apps, 5 starts), 2.99 fip, .321 babip. Its amazing how similar Hearn, Crownover, Guilbeau and Borne’s numbers were, each profiling as a command/control lefty starter in Short-A. Outlook for Next season: Low-A rotation competition with the rest of his fellow lefty 2015 draftees.

Mariano Rivera Jr. got 3 starts before it was clear he needed to be pushed to relief; see the reliever’s section.

Matthew DeRosierhad two bad starts in Auburn before getting dumped back to the GCL; see the Rookie league write-up for more.

Maximo Valerohad 4 appearances and one start in Auburn after a late season promotion: see the GCL write-up for more.

Auburn Relievers: taking a look at the relief corps. We’ll organize relievers by going by IP from most to least. Anyone with less than 10 IP will get cursory analysis at the end.

Luis Torreswas Dickey’s “tandem” starter for a while, getting zero “starts” but pitching mostly longer stints usually on the same schedule as Dickey. We saw this with several others and will treat them as “relievers” for the purposes of this post. Season stats: 5-1, 5.66 ERA, 4.54 fip, 1.37 whip, 22/17 K/BB in 35 innings. Torres got bumped up at season’s end to provide a bit of cover in Low-A but didn’t merit the promotion based on his production. In his age 21 season he showed he still has some work to do and regressed badly from his 2014 production in Short-A. Where does he go from here? I think he’s destined to miss out on the Hagerstown bullpen, spend more time in XST and try Short-A again in 2016. Outlook for Next Season: short-A bullpen.

Mariano Rivera Jr, went 1-2, 5.45 ERA in Short-A with 26/3 K/BB in 33IP (19 app, 3 starts). 2.70 FIP, .388 babip. Rivera was tried as a starter and quickly failed, getting moved to the pen, where he was much better. Starter ERA: 13.00. Reliever ERA: 2.63. His seasonal ERA isn’t nearly as bad as it looks thanks to some bad luck; his FIP is good and his K/BB rate looks good as well. He profiles like his father; slight, live arm, good stuff as a reliever. I can see him moving up the ladder as a back-of-the-bullpen reliever. Perhaps a disappointment that a 4th round pick was relegated to the bullpen after just three starts … but could be a quick moving arm on a team that clearly needs them. Outlook for Next Season: low-A bullpen/closer.

Adam Boghosianwent 3-0, 4.28 era across 2 levels with 16/18 k/bb in 27ip, 5.59 fip, .162 babip in short-A. Anytime you have more walks than strike-outs, its a bad thing. And he posted a mediocre ERA despite an unbelievably low babip; his numbers are likely even worse with a longer sample size. Another senior sign that may get the axe once full-season rosters get set next spring. Outlook for Next Season: low-A bullpen/release candidate.

Cody Gunterwent 1-0 4.15 ERA, 23/8 K/BB in 21.2 IP for Short-A Auburn, 3.84 fip, .259 babip. Gunter was drafted as a 3B and after two non-descript seasons in Auburn converted to the mound. So far, results look promising; he maintained a K/inning ratio with good control and could be better based on the ERA-FIP delta. I see him getting pushed to the Low-A bullpen in 2016. Outlook for Next Season: low-A bullpen.

Kevin Mooney, was 1-0, 5.40 ERA in Short-A with a 15/13 K/bb in 21.2 innings, 4.95 fip, .333 babip. Not a great debut for the local kid Mooney, who was last seen blowing both super-regional games that enabled UVA to surprisingly make its way to the CWS (where even more surprisingly they ended up winning). Far, far too many walks given how many punch-outs he had, his FIP was still way up there even given a BABIP not really that out of line. Needs to step it up if he wants a full-season job. Outlook for Next Season: low-A bullpen competition/release candidate.

Tommy Petersonwas 0-0, 2.66 in Auburn with 13/4 K/BB in 20 relief innings, 2.83 fip, .318 babip as part time closer. Not too many innings to judge on here; looks like a good option for the Hagerstown 2016 bullpen. He was one of the few Auburn hurlers from the 2015 class to get the bump up to low-A in 2015. Outlook for Next Season: low-A bullpen competition.

Connor Overtonwent 1-1 with a 3.72 ERA (13/5 K/BB in 19.1 IP) after getting cut loose from Miami’s short-A squad and quickly getting snapped up last July. He’s an oddity; a 22-yr old MLFA already making the rounds of the lower minors. He briefly got called up to AAA at season’s end but is currently un-attached. With Washington’s glut of arms, i’m not sure he did enough to make the team think he was worth keeping on for a full-season spot and I think the Richmond product goes elsewhere (Atlee HS in Mechanicsburg and then ODU in Norfolk). Outlook for Next Season: in another organization.

Matt Pirrowas 0-0 3.71 ERA across two levels, ending in Short-A. 14/11 k/bb in 17ip, 4.52 fip, .372 babip in short-A. Not great numbers; too many walks, but his ERA/FIP likely the result of a bit of unlucky babip. In a battle to stay employed though going into next year by virtue of his senior sign status. Outlook for Next Season: low-A bullpen/release candidate.

John Felizdidn’t get a ton of innings in 2015: throwing just 17.1 across both short-season squads. In Auburn he had a 4.38 ERA in 12 innings and didn’t pitch after July 28th (but didn’t go on the D/L). He may have been hurt and just not officially gone on a D/L. More or less a lost season for Feliz, who just turned 22, was an old IFA and has yet to perform outside of complex ball. He may not get too many more chances; I see him getting one more shot at Short-A before getting cut loose. Outlook for Next Season: short-A bullpen/release candidate.

Ryan Brinleywas unhittable in 10 innings in the NY Penn league and was bumped up; see the Low-A write-up for more.

Other Relievers who had less than 10 IP in 2015

Jose Moralesgot blasted in two Low-A starts after three quick relief appearances (8ip total) in Auburn, then spent the rest of the year on the D/L. See Low-A write-up for more.

Andrew Leestruck out 12 guys in 8 innings in the NY Penn and was bumped up. See Low-A write-up for more.

Koda Gloverstruck out 11 guys in 6 innings in the NY Penn and was bumped up. See Low-A write-up for more.

Mick VanVossenspent most of the season in the GCL; see rookie league write-up for more.

Cole Plouckgot sent to Auburn, had two appearances in 10 days, gave up just 2 hits and one run in 5 innings … and then was released. He had decent 2014 numbers in the GCL; this one is curious to me. I guess the team saw all they needed to see in XST. Outlook for Next Season: out of baseball.

Joey Webbwas released 6/25/15, losing out in the numbers game when the 2015 short-season college draftees started flowing in. He, like Plouck, clearly were not impressive enough during XST to merit any further consideration after run-of-the-mill 2014 seasons. Outlook for Next Season: out of baseball.

Yorlin Reynosopitched one game in the first week of the season, walked 6 guys and got demoted to the GCL. See Rookie write-up for more.

Ryan Ullmanngot stuck in XST to start the season, hooked up with Hagerstown 5 weeks into the season, got hit hard, was dumped to Auburn, had one appearance and then was summarily released. Quite a quick downturn of events for Ullmann, who was always going to be a long shot (30th rounder out of a small school). Outlook for Next season: out of baseball.

David Ramosthrew 2.1 innings of rehab ball for Auburn before returning to Hagerstown: see low-A write-up for more.

Two guys (James Bourque, Anderson Martinez) both spent the whole season on the D/L; both are starters who should compete for spots in 2016 after the lost season. Outlook for Next Season: Short-A rotation competition.

Another two guys (Chase McDowell, Michael Sylvestri) were put on the “restricted list” at some point in 2015, usually indicating voluntary retirement. Outlook for Next season: out of baseball.

Summary

Auburn was not a good team this year; they were 35-58. And a lot of that was due to the “brain drain” of the pitching staff; inside of a short season 11 guys got bumped up and beyond. Some of them quickly dominated Short-A and earned their promotion, others trickled up as the season moved on. In the end, the staff was anchored by a quartet of college lefty 2015 draftees with strikingly similar numbers, and it should be interesting to see how this group performs moving forward.

For some historical perspective, here’s 2013’s version (featuring Pedro Encarnaction), 2012’s version (Aaron Barrett was the feature pitcher) and 2011’s version (Taylor Jordan the feature pitcher) of this post specifically for Hagerstown/Low-A. Had I done this post in 2014 I would have “featured” Lucas Giolito, who dominated in 2014 for the suns (10-2, 2.20 ERA).

Note; while its relatively easy to do reviews for the upper levels of the system, once we get lower we’re usually talking about a lot of short sample sizes. I’ll depend on text from my “draft class” write-ups where appropriate.

Hagerstown starters. The rotation started the season with AWilliams, Bach*, LReyes, Van Orden, Valdez. 18 guys got starts in 2015. Here’s an overview of the starters used, starting with the original five starters, going all the way to the rehab spot starts.

Austen Williamsblitzed the Sally league (8-1 with a 2.10 ERA) and forced a promotion to Potomac mid-season, where he continued pitching well. See High-A write-up for more. Outlook for Next season: High-A rotation to start with an eye on quick promotion.

Connor Bach: Posted a 6-4, 3.85 ERA with 106/69 K/BB in 110 ip (20 starts) in Low A as a member of the rotation for much of the season. 4.08 fip, .311 babip. Not too shabby for a 21st round senior sign from a relatively unknown baseball school (VMI). Perhaps too many walks, but nearly a K/inning in full-season ball portends well for his future. At the very least he could move up as a lefty specialist. Outlook for Next season: High-A rotation.

Luis Reyeswent 6-7 with a 4.82 ERA in 24 starts and 117.2 IP, both leading the Hagerstown squad. 1.42 whip, 4.87 fip. Reyes signed relatively late for a Dominican player (at age 18) but has steadily progressed out of the DSL and through the short-season leagues. This was his first stint in full-season ball and at age 20 could be excused for getting hit somewhat hard. A 72/50 K/BB ratio isn’t promising; he maintained much better K/9 rates in the lower levels. I figure he’ll repeat Low-A looking to improve his numbers and see if he can regain some of his swing and miss stuff. Outlook for Next season: repeating Low-A rotation.

Drew Van Ordenwent 5-5, 3.61 ERA for Hagerstown with 47/34 K/BB in 92ip (15 starts), 4.33 fip, .254 babip. Not a bad season for the under-slot 2014 5th round senior sign, who’s clearly sticking around. He was mostly a spot starter for Hagerstown this year, getting a bunch of starts during the turmoil of the rotation. He ended the season on the DL after giving the team 92 decent innings. His FIP is a bit weak thanks to overall lucky BABIP contact but he has given no reason not to put himself into the discussion for that same role in Potomac next year. Outlook for Next season: High-A rotation competition.

Philips Valdezdominated the Sally league, going 5-2 with a 1.47 ERA and quickly earned a promotion to Potomac. See High-A write-up for more. Outlook for Next season: High-A rotation

Jefry Rodriguezbounced between Short-A and Low-A again this season, starting in Hagerstown, pitching most of the year in Auburn and ending in Hagerstown. See the Short-A write-up for more. Outlook for Next season: Low-A rotation.

Mario Sanchezwas Hagerstown’s long-man/spot starter all year, getting 8 starts in 29 appearances and posting a 4.86 ERA along the way. 70/18 K/BB ratio in 90.2 innings, 1.28 whip, 4.18 whip, .301 babip. Sanchez is even younger than the other DSL grads on this team (he didn’t turn 21 until after the season was over, so 2016 will be his age-21 season). Good control (nearly 4 strikeouts per walk) but was a bit homer prone (11 homers in 90 innings). He’s undersized (6’1″) and I wonder if he’s not destined to continue to be this rubber-armed innings eater for the organization. Its the same way he’s been used all along; few starts but lots of IP per appearance. I also think he needs to improve his numbers before moving up, and he’s young enough to repeat a level without really stalling his progress. Outlook for Next season: Low-A swingman again.

Justin Amlungis a bit of an oddity; he’s was a 24-yr old MLFA after getting cut from the Cubs’ high-A affiliate in May of 2015. The Nats signed him and had him repeating Low-A for his third straight year. He (like Sanchez) served as a swing-man, getting 19 appearances and 8 starts for Hagerstown, posting a 4.22 ERA along the way. He had a great 42/7 K/BB ratio in 64 low-A innings, 1.14 whip, 3.70 fip. He was promoted towards the end of the season and had a nice stretch for Potomac before the seasons’ end. He was immediately declared a MLFA but has re-signed for 2016. Outlook for Next season: high-A bullpen/swingman.

Matt Purkehad 8 starts and 32 IP for Hagerstown during his tour of the Nats farm system in 2015: see AA write-up for more.

Erick Feddeevenly split his season between Short-A and Hagerstown. He was 4-1, 2.57 ERA in Short-A Auburn with 36/8 in 35ip (8 starts), 2.60 fip, .346 babip. He then got bumped up to Hagerstown where he threw another 29 innings across 6 starts with lesser stats (1-2, 4.34 ERA). A good post-Tommy John debut season for our 2014 1st rounder Fedde, despite the rather restrictive innings limits put on him; he was limited to just 5ip per start for a total of 64ip on the season between two levels. Given his mediocre stats in Hagerstown and the Nats historical promotion schedule, he could start 2016 in the Hagerstown rotation with a quick move up to the Potomac rotation. I could be wrong though; looking at the state of my projected High-A rotation I could also easily see him starting the year in Potomac. There’s just so many arms competing for the Low-A rotation he may be forced up. Outlook for Next season: High-A rotation.

Andrew Leeposted a 5-1, 1.63 ERA across 3 levels, ending up in Hagerstown where he spent most of his first pro season. 47/10 K/BB in 38.2 innings (16/5 starts), 2.19 fip, .250 babip specifically in lowA where he spent most of his time. An intriguing arm for sure and more than held his own in 5 Low-A starts. He’s the fastest riser so far of the 2015 draft class and he’s easily in the mix for the Hagerstown 2016 rotation. Outlook for Next season: Low-A rotation to start; could be a fast riser.

Jose Moralesgot blasted in two Low-A starts after three quick relief appearances in Auburn, then spent the rest of the year on the D/L. Not much to glean from his year; is he a starter or a reliever? He only threw 30-some odd relief innings in 2014; I think he’s being used as a long-man/spot starter arm for now. I would guess he’ll start 2016 in XST with an eye of hooking on with Short-A again. Outlook for Next season: Short-A bullpen.

Ryan Ullmanngot stuck in XST to start the season, hooked up with Hagerstown 5 weeks into the season, got hit hard, was dumped to Auburn, had one appearance and then was summarily released. Quite a quick downturn of events for Ullmann, who was always going to be a long shot (30th rounder out of a small school). Outlook for Next season: out of baseball.

Other Guys who got starts for Hagerstown:

Joan Baezgot 3 starts for Hagerstown in June, got hammered, and spent the rest of the year in short-season ball. See GCL write-up for more.

Jeff Howellhad two starts for Hagerstown before getting a few more in Potomac as he converted to the mound. See High-A write-up for more.

Brian Rauhhad two “rehab” starts for Hagerstown and spent most of the year in Harrisburg. See AA write-up for more.

Robbie Dickeyhad two starts in Hagerstown before getting dumped back to Auburn. See Short-A write-up for more.

Robert Orlanhad one spot-start for Hagerstown; see the reliever section.

Wirkin Estevezspent the entire season on the D/L: he’ll compete for a Low-A rotation spot in 2016.

Hagerstown Relievers: taking a look at the relief corps. We’ll organize relievers by going by IP from most to least. Anyone with less than 10 IP will get cursory analysis at the end.

Andrew Cooper: 2-2, 3.53 ERA with 35/16 K/BB in 63.2 relief IP for Low-A Hagerstown, 3.63 fip, .283 babip. Improved his numbers across the board while repeating Low-A. Still isn’t getting the K/9 we’d like to see though. He’ll be 24 in High-A next year in what probably is a make or break season. Outlook for Next season: High-A bullpen.

David Napoli went 7-5, 4.01 ERA with 62/36 K/BB in 60 relief IP mostly for LowA Hagerstown. 3.57 fip, .289 babip. He started with Potomac but spent most of the year in Hagerstown, despite turning 25 during the season. If anything, his numbers took a step back from his 2014 Hagerstown campaign, and given his age and the glut of arms in the system, time may be running out. Or maybe not: i mean, he signed for $15k and basically cost the team nothing and eats innings; that kind of guy is useful to have around. Outlook for Next season: High-A bullpen.

Robert Orlanwent 3-1, 3.00 ERA with 85/28 K/BB ratio in 72 relief IP between LowA and HighA. Orlan bounced between Potomac and Hagerstown all season, ending up in HighA with pretty good numbers in a “more than a loogy” role. Especially impressive is 85 Ks in just 72 ip. He’s older for these levels, inarguably, but could put himself in a good position by continuing to succeed in 2016. I see him in the Potomac bullpen again with an eye towards a June promotion to AA when the short-season promotions come due. Outlook for Next season: High-A bullpen.

Samuel Johnswent 3-4, 4.31 ERA between LowA and ShortA with 39/17 k/bb in 62.2 relief innings, 4.63 fip, .290 babip in lowA. He struggled in LowA, but then dropped back to ShortA and was dominant. Not great, but certainly not bad for a 31st round 5th year senior as compared to what has happened to other 5th year senior signs on this list. Maybe not the best stuff, but has been effective. My guess is that he either makes the Hagerstown team next spring or is cut loose, but the fact that he hung around this long gives him some more room to work with. Outlook for Next season: Low-A bullpen.

Kevin Perezthrew 36 relatively effective innings for Hagerstown after throwing 18 relatively ineffective innings for Potomac to start the year. The team signed him as a MLFA early in 2015 after he was dumped out of the Low-A Royals affiliate but I doubt he showed the team enough to stick with him given the number of arms rising out of the short-season rosters. Outlook for Next season: out of the organization.

Deion Williams, went 1-2, 5.46 ERA with 22/18 K/BB in 29.2 relief innings with Hagerstown. Williams was drafted as a SS but converted to the mound after a year or so. Since then, he’s struggled, somehow making it onto the full-season Hagerstown roster in June after sitting in XST for two months. There, he continued not to impress; his career ERA is now 6.12 across 103IP and the three lower levels of the minors. I could see 2016 being a “make it or break it” year for him; he either makes the full season bullpen or he’s cut. Outlook for Next season: Low-A bullpen competition.

Koda Gloverwent 1-1, 1.80 ERA across 2 levels, getting promoted to Low-A after just 6 IP in Short-A. Of course, in those 6ip he gave up just one hit and struck out 11, so it was pretty clear he was over-qualified for the league. For the season: 38/2 K/BB in 30 ip (19app), 2.44 fip, .288 babips in LowA where he spent most of the year. 38 to 2 (!!) K/BB ratio in 30 innings. No wonder he was an over-slot deal; the 2015 draftee is one of the highest rising guys in the class so far. Glover profiled very well and should be in the mix for a High-A bullpen slot in 2016 already.Outlook for Next season: High-A bullpen.

Brett Mooneyhamwas 0-2 with a 6.41 ERA in 19 ineffective innings for Low-A Hagerstown before the Nats finally cut the cord and released him on 6/3/15. Mooneyham was in Low-A for the third successive season, having failed to make the cut in Potomac in each of 2013 and 2014. You’d have to say that he’s one of the more higher-profile drafting failures of the Mike Rizzo era. Or maybe not; the team had to go over-slot to sign Giolito and may have skimped for the rest of the draft. Outlook for Next season: out of the organization.

Ryan Brinleywent 1-4 1.44 ERA across 3 levels this year with a 16/1 K/BB in 31.1 ip, 3.85 fip, .292 babip in low-A (where he ended up). Great 27th round find so far in Brinley, who may not have a ton of swing and miss but certainly seems to have some command (1 BB in 31 innings??). Could be a nice little middle relief option going forward, someone who can keep his team in games. I could see him in the High-A bullpen next year based on his command of Low-A. Outlook for Next season: High-A bullpen.

Jake Walshthrew 17 scoreless innings in Hagerstown before getting bumped up to High-A. See High-A write-up for more.

David Ramosthrew 13 innings of middle relief for Hagerstown before getting hurt; he spent most of the summer going “rehab” assignments all throughout short-season ball before being “activated” once the full-season was done. Not much to glean from his season; his ERAs were not pretty anywhere he went. He’s now 24, in his fourth pro season outside of the DSL and has yet to post an ERA below 6.46 in any of his multiple stops. Honestly, I’m surprised he made the full-season bullpen in 2015. I’d guess he’ll take another shot at Hagerstown’s bullpen in 2016 and if he doesn’t make it, he could be facing an April 1 release. Outlook for Next season: Low-A bullpen competition.

Other Relievers who got less than 10 IP for Hagerstown this year:

Tommy Peterson: threw 6ip in the last week of the season: see Short-A write-up.

It was a successful season for Hagerstown hurlers; I count 6-7 guys who earned promotions by pitching well in Hagerstown. A good number of them should feature in 2016 for either Potomac or Harrisburg. This didn’t help the Suns much, as they finished both halves right around .500, not quite good enough for a playoff spot. 2016’s staff will have some familiarity to it; I think a good portion of the 2016 opening day rotation will look just like the 2015 end-of-season rotation, mirroring the Nats recent habit of having players repeat levels in overlapping seasons and doing mid-season promotions.

For some historical perspective, here’s 2013’s version (featuring Taylor Jordan), here’s 2012’s version (Nathan Karns the feature pitcher) and 2011’s version (Danny Rosenbaum the feature pitcher) of this post specifically for Potomac/High-A. Had we done this in 2014, we would likely have “featured” Gilberto Mendez for his good work closing.

Note; while its relatively easy to do reviews for the upper levels of the system, once we get lower we’re usually talking about a lot of short sample sizes. And i’m sure there’s people reading this who saw every pitcher on this post throw in 2015; by all means feel free to comment if you believe i’ve mis-characterized someone here. Of all the write-ups I expect readers here to have better opinions of Potomac players by virtue of actually seeing them week in/week out, so definitely pipe up.

Potomac starters. The rotation started the season with Pivetta, Rauh, Schwartz, Suero, Spann*. 19 guys got starts in 2015. Here’s an overview of the starters used, starting with the original five starters, going all the way to the rehab spot starts.

Nick Pivettawas your opening day starter, and by the end of the season he had gotten promoted and traded. He earned his promotion, going 7-4 with a 2.29 ERA in 15 starts for Potomac. He was not as successful upon his promotion to AA, but that was still enough to catch the eye of Philadelphia and be the bounty for them ridding themselves of Jonathan Papelbon‘s ego and contract. If he was still with the team, he would have been the ‘featured” player above and not Mapes for his dominant season in High-A. Outlook for Next Season: Philadelphia’s AA team in Reading, where he gets to go against Harrisburg and all his old teammates a few times a year.

Brian Rauhthrew 7 excellent High-A starts before getting promoted to AA, where he spent most of the year. See AA write-up for more. Outlook for Next season: AA rotation or bust.

Blake Schwartzhad three High-A starts, struggled, and retired. After a fantastic 2013 season in Potomac, he just never could make the jump to AA and (not that I’ve ever talked to him or anything) perhaps got discouraged after not really progressing further up the chain. Outlook for Next season: retired, out of baseball

Wander Sueropitched pretty effectively for Potomac in the first half in a swingman role, getting 16 appearances and 5 starts and posting a 2.41 ERA, 1.20 whip, and a 3.27 FIP. Not much in the way of swing and miss though; 39/18 K/BB in 56 innings. After moving up, he struggled in AA but inched up his K/9 rate while focusing more on middle relief. No reason to think he can’t compete in AA in 2016, and is still relatively young (he turned 24 just after the season ended so he’ll still be 24 all next year). Outlook for Next season: AA bullpen, perhaps High-A bullpen again if he gets squeezed in a numbers game.

Matthew Spann bounced between High-A and AA all year, posting mid 4 ERAs in both places. See AA write-up for more. Outlook for Next season: AA rotation.

Reynaldo Lopezled the team in IP and starts for 2015, going 6-7 with a 4.09 ERA in 99 IP across 19 starts. His stats: 4.09 ERA, 1.22 whip, 2.95 FIP and 94/28 K/BB in those 99 innings, all as a 21-yr old. It isn’t hard to see why Lopez is highly ranked on “top 10” lists for Nats prospects; he more than held his own in High-A as one of the younger hurlers in the league. The team held him back in XST for a few weeks to keep innings off his arm. While most scouting reports think he’ll eventually end up in the bullpen (no third pitch, iffy mechanics, big arm), he’s obviously worth giving more chances to stick as a high-velocity starter (in the same vein as Yordano Ventura for example). Outlook for Next season: AA rotation.

John Simmsthrew an excellent half season for Potomac before getting bumped up mid-season; see AA writeup for more. Outlook for Next season: AA rotation.

Lucas Giolitothrew an dominant half season for Potomac (86 ks in 69 innings) after being kept in XST for the first 5 weeks of the season (so much for those pre-2015 interviews where he proclaimed that he had no innings limits, eh?) before also getting bumped up mid-season; see AA writeup for more. Outlook for Next season: AA rotation.

Austen Williamsblitzed the Sally league and forced a promotion to Potomac mid-season, where he continued pitching well. In High-A he was 4-6 with a 2.59 ERA, 1.09 whip, 3.22 fip and 41/17 K/BB over 63 high-A innings. The 2014 draftee is looking like a nice little find. There does seem to be a bit of fortuitousness in his numbers (.253 BABIP and a delta between his ERA and FIP), so I could see the log-jam in the AA projected rotation keeping Williams back in Potomac for the first half of the 2016 season. Outlook for Next season: High-A rotation to start with an eye on quick promotion.

Philips Valdezdominated the Sally league and earned a promotion after two months. In Potomac he bounced in and out of the rotation, getting 10 starts across 22 appearances and posting a 3.77 ERA in High-A. Other numbers: 1.44 whip, 3.26 fip, 48/25 K/BB in 59 High-A innings. Valdez has been around for a while; this was his *seventh* season in the Nats organization. He just turned 24. But he has relatively few innings on his arm; just 260 IP across those seven seasons (he missed the entirety of 2012). He’s looking like he could be a low-profile decent starter going forward, though he may run out of time in the system before the team is faced with a tougher decision on how to keep him. For now, I think he repeats High-A to start, is tried out as a full time starter, and we’ll see if he can push forward to AA in 2016. Outlook for Next season: High-A rotation

Tyler Mapesso far is a pretty good 2014 draft success story; he was a 30th round *senior sign* out of Tulane who was basically unhittable in Short-A last year, threw 6 clean innings in Low-A and was bumped up to High-A (the first 2014 draftee to get promoted that high) after just a couple of weeks. Once in Potomac, he continued to pitch well in a swing-man role; 30 appearances, 8 starts, a 2.38 ERA across 90 innings, 1.22 whip, 2.78 FIP and 75/17 K/BB over 96 innings in High-A. Not too shabby. If it were me, I’d push him right to AA and stick him in the rotation, but as noted before I’m projecting an awful lot of starters to be in that Harrisburg rotation right now. I’m curious to see how things shake out for someone like Mapes; he didn’t last to the 30th round as a favor to the Nats; is there something limiting in his capabilities that will cause him to suddenly top out like a lot of late-round senior signs? We’ll see. Outlook for Next season: AA rotation.

Ian Dicksonwas hurt the first half of the season and finished 2015 the exact same place he finished 2014: in the Potomac rotation with decent to effective numbers. 2015 totals for Dickson: 3-3, 3.60 ERA in 12 appearances/8 starts. We see a problem though: 31 ks and 39 (?!) walks in 40 innings in Potomac this year. Wow; that’s a walk an inning. He never saw this kind of walk rate before, so hopefully its just a remnant of whatever injury kept him out the first half of the year. Nonetheless, he seems like he’ll be back in Potomac a third year until he can solve his walk rate issues. Outlook for Next season: High-A rotation.

Dakota Bacus began the season in Potomac, had 5 starts and 8 appearances and got bumped quickly to Harrisburg, where he played most of the season. See AA write-up for more.

Jeff Howellis a pretty interesting player. He’s a career minor league backup catcher, having toiled in the lower minor leagues since 2005. He signed on with Washington in 2012 and hung around as a backup between the levels for a couple of years. Then suddenly, at the age of 32, he decided to try his hand on the mound. Perhaps he was inspired by other Catchers-turned-Hurlers like Jason Motte. He (presumably) hung out in XST for most of the season learning how to pitch, then threw a couple of games in the Rookie league, then for Hagerstown, then finally for Potomac at season’s end. He struggled once he got to Potomac, giving up 9 runs in 13 innings but more importantly walking 17 guys while he was there. He’s now a MLFA and one may think that he’d re-up with Washington since we’re the ones who gave him a shot. We’ll see how the off-season goes. He may choose to pitch elsewhere where he can be guaranteed a rotation spot (a tough one in our system, since we’re completely overloaded with arms from pitching-heavy drafts over the past few years). Outlook for Next season: continuing his conversion to pitcher in another organization.

Others who got starts in Potomac for 2015:

Matt Purke got three brief starts in Potomac before settling in Harrisburg for the year; see AA write-up for more.

Potomac Relievers: taking a look at the relief corps. We’ll organize relievers by going by IP from most to least. Anyone with less than 10 IP will get cursory analysis at the end.

Justin Thomaswas the bullpen leader in IP for Potomac in 2015, throwing 57 innings across 28 games, posting a 3.43 ERA, 1.21 whip, a 2.84 FIP and getting 50/18 K/BB in those 57 innings. He’s a lefty but was used more as a long-man, not being limited to just short stints. He’s looking great considering his limited draft pedigree (senior sign out of a small college in the 21st round) and I see no reason not to keep bumping him up the chain. Outlook for Next season: AA rotation.

Jake Johanssenwas 1-7 with a 5.44 ERA, 1.81 whip, 4.69 fip with 48/27 K/BB in 48 relief innings for Potomac. Johanssen was our top draft pick in 2013, has already been “demoted” from a starter to the pen, and now seemingly can’t perform in a relief role either. Where do you go from here with him? You and I know that his large bonus is a “sunk cost” and shouldn’t dictate his usage, but teams don’t seem to see it that way. Just look at how long the Nats kept Brett Mooneyham around after it became clear he wasn’t capable of performing, even at lower levels of the minors? I see Johanssen repeating High-A and trying to get his career back on track. Outlook for Next season: High-A bullpen.

Derek Selfseems to be taking a step back in his career; after posting a 1.69 ERA through half a season in Potomac last year, he more than earned a promotion up to AA where he more than held his own. However after just 14 innings in AA this year, he got dumped back to Potomac, thus repeating High-A for the third straight year. He was solid again; a 4/1 K/BB ratio in middle relief, but where is his Nats career going at this point? Obviously he needs to be in the AA bullpen next year, but you could have also said that last year and it didn’t work out. There’s going to be a lot of AA bullpen competition; if he gets squeezed out does he get cut in 2016? we’ll see. Outlook for Next season: AA bullpen competition/Release Candidate.

Brian Duprais in a similar boat as Derek Self; he’s now 27 and spent most of his third successive year in Potomac. He was promoted mid-season to AA but didn’t last long after getting hit hard. Final Potomac stats for 2015: 2.79 ERA in 42 mostly later bullpen innings. I think he’s going to be in a similar situation as Self this coming spring; if he cannot cut it at AA (and there’s plenty of competition for that bullpen), he may get cut loose entirely. Not that it should matter, but it should be noted that Dupra was a senior sign for limited bonus money out of Notre Dame in 2011, so it could be a “make the team or get cut” situation. Outlook for Next season: AA bullpen competition/Release candidate.

Cody Daviswas struggling early in the season, with a decent ERA but ugly peripherals (4.55 fip, 10/15 K/BB in 21 ip) and was released towards the end of June as upwards player movement started to need bullpen spots. The undrafted MLFA signing from 2011 played parts of 5 seasons for the system but seemed to fall apart this year as he repeated High-A. It does not look like he picked up anywhere and may be done. Outlook for Next season: out of baseball.

Manny Rodriguezonly threw 21 innings between two different D/L stints this year, and then was released soon after the end of the season. It seems that the team believed he never recovered from the injury that cost him two full seasons early in his minor league career. Outlook for Next season: out of baseball.

Jake Walshthrew 17 scoreless innings as a late-inning/closer in Low-A before getting bumped up to High-A in July. From there out he posted a 3.66 ERA in 19.2 innings across 9 appearances with a 19/10 K/BB ratio. There’s something odd going on with Walsh; why was he even in Low-A to start 2015? He posted a sub-2.00 ERA across low- and high-A LAST YEAR, yet didn’t start in Potomac nor get considered for the AA rotation despite being a senior sign in 2013. He now holds a CAREER 1.65 ERA and seems to me to more than have earned a shot at a look at a higher level. Outlook for Next season: AA bullpen.

Kevin Perezspent the 2nd half of the year in Hagerstown after struggling early on in Potomac: see Low-A write-up for more.

Robert Orlanspent most of the season in Hagerstown but posted a 2.20 ERA in Potomac in 16.1 August innings: see Low-A write-up for more.

Justin Amlung, similarly to Orlan above, spent most of the season in Hagerstown but posted an excellent 1.84 ERA in Potomac in 14.2 July and August innings: see Low-A write-up for more.

Other Relievers of note who had less than 10 IP for Potomac this year:

David Napoli had 8 IP for Potomac before getting demoted to Hagerstown: see Low-A write-up for more.

Matt Purke threw 7 IP for Potomac during his tour of the Nats farm system in 2015: see AA write-up for more.

Erik Davis threw 3 re-hab IP in 2015; see AA write-up for more.

Tanner Roark threw one 4Ip start during his “stretch out” minor league stint; see MLB write-up for more.

Brenden Webb, normally an Outfielder, threw a 3Ip mop-up game (really? they couldn’t find ONE reliever out of the 32 guys who threw innings for Potomac this year?)

MLBers Aaron Barrett, Casey Janssen and David Carpenter each had some re-hab innings; see MLB write-up for more.

A few guys spent the entire year on the D/L: Ronald Pena, Kylin Turnbull, Hector Sylvestre: all are looking at repeating Potomac next year if/when healthy.

Summary

Potomac certainly saw a lot of churn in its pitching staff; 32 total pitchers used (19 different starters including rehab starts by relievers). Their leading IP was Lopez, who didn’t even hit 100 IP on the year. There were at least 6-7 arms who earned their promotions to AA mid-season, a great sign for the rising tide of pitching talent in the system. Lots of guys with ERAs that start with a “2” in the season-ending stats. It didn’t help Potomac in the standings; they finished both halves several games under .500 and out of the playoffs. This will create quite a competition for the AA staff next year: my projections at this point show at least 6-7 rotation candidates, 8-9 bullpen candidates and another 3-4 guys who are right at that age where they may be summarily cut if they don’t make the AA team in 2016. Harsh, but good for the Nats, who could use all the bullpen help they can get.

Note: in previous posts we’ve used trending up, steady and down for prospect growth analysis. For me, if a guy has debuted in the majors then he’s automatically a “success” in terms of prospect development and is an automatic “trending up” green. We’ll add in “matriculated” as a category. However, doing this analysis I’m finding myself listing guys as “trending down” even if they’ve advanced well in the system but have seemingly peaked and/or failed to reach their potential. I’ll list them as “peaked” instead of trending down as a result. Might be unfair, but when looking at guys who in some cases are entering their 6th pro season I think it is fair to pass some final judgement on their careers at this point.

It is also worth noting that the 2011 draft was the last of its kind before new CBA rules went into effect. So what you see in 2011 isn’t what we see now. Specifically:

There used to be 50 rounds; after this draft it went down to 40. And looking at the rounds 40-50 picks, you can understand why there was little need for those additional 10 rounds.

There used to be no caps on bonus spending; after this draft, no more massive bonus spending to sign HS prep kids in lower rounds to 1st round money.

And because of the new caps and the tracking of limits up to the 10th round, we now see teams often making “throw away” college senior signs in the 6th-10th picks to save on bonus dollars to go over-slot for high profile picks or later draft steals. In 2011, these same guys were getting drafted in the 20th-30th round range instead.

Without further ado:

Round 1: (#6 overall) Anthony Rendon, 3B Coll Jr from Rice: slashed just .264/.344/.363in an injury plagued 2015 season after posting a 6.6 bWAR season in 2014. While clearly he remains an injury risk, the potential he shows remains as one of the top players in the league. Hopefully 2016 will see him returned to his natural position at third base, his natural batting position as 2nd in the lineup, and a return to form generally. From a prospect development perspective, he’s more than reached his goal and you have to think that some of the teams that passed on him on draft day wish they had a do over. Matriculated to Majors.

Round 1 (#23 overall): Alex Meyer, RHP Coll Jr from Kentucky: traded straight up forDenard Span in Nov 2012. Since, the Twins have brought him along slowly, having him repeat AAA and as of the end of 2015 he has just 2 2/3rds major league innings. What happened? Perhaps he’s finally getting banished to the bullpen like most development types thought always would happen. Matriculated to Majors.

Round 1-S (#34): Brian Goodwin, OF Juco from Miami Dade CC South: slashed .226/.290/.340 for Harrisburg in 2015, which represented a demotion from his 2014 assignment in AAA. He’s on the 40-man roster (having been placed there to protect him against Rule-5), but may not be there for long. Goodwin skipped High-A during that period when the Nats ownership was penalizing Potomac owners for the state of their field, and you have to wonder if it hurt his development. He’s playing winter ball this off-season, perhaps in hopes of putting his name back in the mix in this organization. Peaked at AA/AAA.

Round 2: Pick given to Philadelphia as compensation for Jayson Werth signing. The Phillies used the pick to take a HS SS out of Florida named Roman Quinn. He’s progressed nicely, slashing .306/.356/.435 this year in AA as a 22-yr old, albeit in limited action for the 4th successive year (injuries?). Its impossible to know what the Nats would have done here, had they still owned the pick, but drafting a prep SS seems unlikely. Then again, if they had this pick they might not have gone with the youngster Goodwin in the 1-S round. Who knows. Werth has totaled 9.2 bWAR in his 5 seasons here, which includes his -1.6 bWAR 2015 season dragging his totals down and nearly his whole 2nd season lost to injury. A good “trade” in terms of the player versus the draft pick for sure. Was it a good contract? Roughly 10 WAR for his $18M*5 =$90M, so about $9M/war. Not so good. We’re still not even to estimates above $7M/WAR and this contract was signed 5 years ago. An argument for another time.

Round 3: Matthew Purke, LHP draft eligible sophomore from TCU: 3-6, 4.36 ERA with 43/17 K/BB across 64 IP (20 apps, 15 starts). 3.51/3.76 FIP in High-A/AA stints. White a whirlwind season for Purke; he was released in Nov 2014 and I thought the team had cut ties. A few days later, they signed him as MLFA in a clearly pre-arranged deal to get him off the 40-man (he was one of the last of a now-banned practice; 40-man draft day deals). He jumped two levels in 2015 (from LowA through HighA to AA), ending the year as Harrisburg’s spot-starter/swing man and struggling there for the 2nd year in a row (6.35 ERA) … but perhaps not as bad as we think by virtue of the huge delta between his ERA and his FIP. More concerning is his K rate; he just doesn’t mow ’em down like he used to. What’s his projection at this point? Loogy? Long-man? I don’t know. I’m not confident that he’ll ever pan out though, so I’ll say generally Peaked at AA, since it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see him getting lit up again in AA next year and just getting released.

Round 4: Kylin Turnbull, LHP juco from Santa Barbara CC: zero IP in 2015; on the Potomac D/L the entire year. Had a relatively middling 2014 in High-A (3-3, 4.41 ERA) then never got out of the gate for 2015. He was not well heralded at the time of the draft and hasn’t really done much to impress in parts of four minor league seasons (career numbers: 15-17 with 4.53 ERA). It wouldn’t surprise me to see him get cut at the end of 2016 spring training if he can’t make the Potomac bullpen. Peaked at High-A.

Round 5: Matt Skole, 3B Coll Jr. from Georgia Tech: slashed .234/.340/.417 between AA and AAA this year, 127/82 K/BB in 465 ABs. 20 homers. Skole is now two full seasons removed from the awful 2013 injury that has more or less derailed his career. Remember; it wasn’t that long ago that Skole was the Nats minor league player of the year (2012) and when he was routinely listed as the 3rd or 4th best prospect in the system. Now he’s 26 in AAA, two years passed over in Rule 5 drafting and seemingly set to reach his 6-year MLFA barrier without really pressing for a MLB roster spot. Can you see the Nats calling him up in 2016? He’s limited to 3B on a team that (as it stands) has at least three or four of them on the MLB roster. I think he may have reached his peak unless he blows up Syracuse early next year. Peaked at AAA.

Round 6: Taylor Hill, RHP Coll Sr from Vanderbilt. 3-10 with a 5.23 ERA for Syracuse, 70/29 K/BB in 118 IP. 3.85 FIP. Also gave the Nats 12 IP across 6 appearances in early June when they had a bullpen crunch. His FIP shows that his ERA for Syracuse was misleading. I think we know what we have in Hill at this point; softer tossing 4-A guy who can throw innings and serve as a decent utility/spare part arm for the team. If you put all our SPs into one big depth chart, i’d probably put Hill somewhere around 10th in pecking order, meaning the odds of him really getting a shot at starting in the majors seems pretty slim. I think he likely sticks in his existing insurance role for at least one or two more seasons before he faces arbitration, where he’ll likely get DFA’d and see his career end. That’s no judgement on his career; as a senior sign for limited money, the fact that he made it out of short-season ball was a success, let alone getting 40-man placement and MLB innings. A great job of drafting and development. Matriculated to Majors.

Round 7: Brian Dupra, RHP Coll Sr from Notre Dame: 3-2, 3.61 ERA between AA and High-A, 43/20 in 52 relief IP. Dupra started in AA, got bounced around and demoted to Potomac in Mid-June where he stayed the rest of the season as a long-man. To me, a look at his career shows a guy who can’t compete outside of A-Ball and who is set to be 27 next spring without any success at AA or higher. I can’t see how he’s long for the organization with the number of college arms drafted recently. Look for a spring release. Still an impressive career for a guy in the same boat as Hill; senior sign, limited bonus money, little expectations. Peaked at High-A.

Round 8: Gregory Holt, RHP Coll Sr from UNC: Released 3/20/14 somewhat surprisingly after a decent season in Potomac.

Round 9: Dixon Anderson, RHP Coll Jr. from UC-Berkeley: Retired 5/14/14 after failing to get promoted and repeating Low-A for the third year.

Round 10: Manny Rodriguez, RHP Coll Sr. from Barry (FL): He was 1-3 with a 6.43 ERA for Potomac this year and was released 9/28/15 at season’s end. It is probably safe to say that the team feels like Rodriguez’ role is easily filled by a younger draftee from more recent classes.

Round 11: Caleb Ramsey, OF Coll Sr from U of Houston: slashed .287/.354/.343 with 77/45 K/BB in 429 ABs between AA and AAA. 2 homers, 13Sbs. Ramsey has quietly climbed the ladder for this team for years, but now reaches a cross roads; he doesn’t hit for enough power to justify his corner outfield spot and the Nats really don’t have any room for him in their MLB outfield. I can’t see him making a 40-man roster and is clearly AAA org guy material at this point. Look for him to play out the string in 2016 and get let go as a 6-year MLFA. Peaked at AAA.

Round 13: Casey Kalenkosky 1B Coll Jr From Texas State: did not sign, returned to Texas State for senior season. Drafted in the 30th round in 2012 by Atlanta, lasted two years and released/retired.

Round 14: Cody Stubbs: LF Juco from Walters State CC (TN): did not sign, transferred to UNC and was drafted in the 8th round of 2013 by Kansas City. Hit .283 this year in HighA.

Round 15: Zachary Houchins, SS Juco from Louisberg College (NC): did not sign, transferred to ECU, drafted in the 13th round of 2014 by Los Angeles Angels. hit .253 in LowA this year.

Round 16: Deion Williams, SS from Redan HS (GA): 1-2, 5.46 ERA with 22/18 K/BB in 29.2 relief innings with Hagerstown. Williams was drafted as a SS but converted to the mound after a year or so. Since then, he’s struggled, somehow making it onto the full-season Hagerstown roster in June after sitting in XST for two months. There, he continued not to impress; his career ERA is now 6.12 across 103IP and the three lower levels of the minors. Hard to see how he’s even still on a roster at this point. Trending Down.

Round 17: Esteban Guzman, RHP Coll Jr from San Jose State University (My parents’ alma mater!): did not sign, returned to SJSU for his senior year and was never drafted again and, as far as I can tell, never played professionally. Odd. He did regress in his Sr. season, going from a 3.33 ERA to a 4.71 ERA, but to go from a 17th round pick to never playing again smells like an injury.http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/events/afl/club.jsp?team_id=527

Round 18: Nick Lee, LHP Juco from Weatherford (TX): 3-1 with a 3.12 ERA between HighA and AA, 57/33 K/BB in 52 IP across 40 games. Lee tried to make it as a starter for a while, but now is having good success as a bullpen guy. He’s got a good BAA, but too many walks right now. But he’s holding on strong and could make a push up the system ala Matt Grace in 2016. The Nats see this as well and sent Lee to the Arizona Fall League this year. Trending Up.

Round 19: Hawtin Buchannan, RHP from Biloxi (Miss.) HS; did not sign, honored commitment to Ole Mis/Mississippi. Drafted in the 20th round in 2014 by Seattle and put up a 4.14 ERA in low-A in 2015.

Round 20: Josh Laxer, RHP from Madison (Miss.) Central HS: did not sign, also honored commitment to Ole Mis/Mississippi. Boy the guys at Ole Miss would have been mad at Mike Rizzo from this draft had things gone differently. Laxer pitched well in Short-A in 2014 but missed all of 2015 with an injury.

Round 21: Todd Simko, LHP Coll Jr. from Texas A&M-Corpus Christi: retired 7/12/13 after not making the Hagerstown squad and struggling in Short-A.

Round 22: Travis Henke RHP Coll Sr from Arkansas-Little Rock: released on 1/6/14 after putting up a 5.79 season pitching out of Potomac’s bullpen all 2013.

Round 23: Khayyan Norfork 2B Coll Sr from Tennessee: slashed .276/.336/.364 in a full season in Potomac, with 2 homers, 10 SBs and a 60/27 K/BB ratio in 341 ABs. Ended the year with a roster-filling callup to AA. Norfork’s third straight year in High-A, each time showing the same skill set; some speed, little power, decent bat but OPS figures in the .680-.700 range. He may stick around for another season to reach MLFA but i’m not sure in what role; perhaps as AA utility guy. Peaked at High-A/AA.

Round 24: Kyle Ottoson LHP Coll Jr from Arizona State: did not sign, returned for senior season and was drafted by San Diego in the 34th round in 2012. Pitched one season of short-A ball and was released.

Round 25: Erick Fernandez C Coll Sr from Georgetown: stuck around in an extreme backup mode (19 total games across three seasons), then released on 7/23/13 when the Short-A squads started to fill up after the 2013 draft. Signed as a MLFA with Pittsburgh in the 2014 off-season but couldn’t make a squad. Cut loose at the end of 2014’s spring training and out of baseball.

Round 26: Shawn Pleffner OF Coll Jr from Univ. of Tampa: slashed .269/.342/.355 with 66/41 K/BB in 394 ABs with Harrisburg. 3 homers. Another guy with local ties (born in DC), Pleffner has hung around by virtue of his decent bat (career .294 hitter) even despite the power (just 12 career homers at 1B). Will he move up the chain one more year? Clearly he’s blocked at the MLB level, and (honestly) 1B spots in AAA may be filled with the kind of spare part slugger that the Nats may be seeking as a bench option to replace Tyler Moore, so Pleffner may lose out on a roster spot by getting squeezed from both sides. Peaked at AA.

Round 27: Bobby Lucas LHP Coll Sr. from George Washington: released sometime in 2013 after struggling in LowA in 2012. The third straight pick with local ties was always a longshot being a senior sign from a small baseball program.

Round 28: Kenneth Ferrer RHP Coll Sr. from Elon University: got hammered in 7 GCL innings after getting drafted and was either released or retired prior to the 2012 season.

Round 29: Sean Cotten C Coll Sr. Tusculum College: did not sign, or if he did he never appeared or played. Odd. He had a nice senior season in school and was a college senior; maybe he just decided to hang ’em up before even trying.

Round 30: Bryan Harper LHP Coll Jr from South Carolina:2-2, 2.96 ERA 34/19 K/BB over 45 relief innings between AA and AAA. The “make the super star happy by drafting his brother” pick has turned out to be a half way decent loogy, and rightfully earned his way all the way to AAA this year. He needs to get his walks down but they’re not too bad. He’s in a position to put his name in the hat in case our cache of lefty relievers falters in 2016. Trending up.

Round 31: Josh Tobias SS from Southeast Guilford HS (NC); did not sign, honored his commitment to Florida where he played four years and was drafted in the 20th round of 2015 by Philadelphia. He hit .321 in Short-A for them so perhaps he sticks around for a bit.

Round 32: Billy Burns OF Coll Jr. from Mercer Univ. (GA): after 3 impressive seasons in our system, the Nats traded Burns straight up for Jerry Blevins in Dec of 2013. Burns debuted for Oakland in late 2014 and played a full season for Oakland in 2015, starting in CF and batting .294 with people talking about getting him Rookie of the Year votes down ballot. Burns for Blevins, who then turned in to den Dekker … perhaps the Nats didn’t really get value for the Burns pick, but also likely never would have realized who they had on their hands thanks to the full OF and names in front of him on the Nats OF prospect pecking order.

Round 33: Trey Karlen 2B Coll Sr from Univ. of Tennessee-Martin: Karlen struggled in the GCL in 2011, never appeared in 2012 and was released on 6/17/13 when the new class of draftees showed up and there was no longer room for him on the short-season squads.

Round 34: Calvin Drummond RHP Coll Jr. Univ. of San Diego (CA): did not sign, returned to U San Diego for his senior year. Looking up Drummond’s draft and collegiate history is interesting. Per his baseballcube and baseball-reference pages, Drummond was drafted no less than four times; once out of HS, once as a draft-eligible sophomore (when the Nats drafted him in 2011), then again as a junior and again as a senior. But the odd part is his history: he went to Orange Coast Juco, then transferred to San Diego where he red-shirted, pitched two decent years as a starter, then transferred again to the baseball powerhouse Arizona Christian University, where he pitched his senior year and was drafted in the 6th round by Detroit. He’s had minor league success, with more than a K/inning and a career 2.84 ERA while working his way to AA this season. Would love to hear his story.

Round 35: Alex Kreis RHP Coll Sr Jamestown College (ND): Struggled in the bullpen for Hagerstown in 2012 and never made it to a 2013 roster, either getting released or retired.

Round 36: Ben Hawkins LHP Coll Jr from Univ. of West Florida: Made the 2013 Potomac bullpen, got shelled, went back to XST after a month and was released a month later.

Round 37: Derrick Bleeker RHP Juco frm Howard College (TX): did not sign, transferred to the U of Arkansas and was drafted in the same 37th round the following year by Baltimore. He struggled for Baltimore’s low-A affiliate in 2015.

Round 38: Brett Mooneyham LHP Coll Jr from Stanford Univ. (CA): did not sign, stayed at Stanford for his Senior year and then the Nats picked him in the 3rd round of 2012. Did Mooneyham really improve his draft stock from a complete afterthought in 2011 to a 3rd round pick?

Round 39: Peter Verdin OF, Coll Jr from Univ. of Georgia: did not sign, returned to U Georgia for his senior year. Was undrafted and went unsigned after his senior season. Smells like a “favor pick,” as he was a local kid: hails from Alexandria, went to Paul VI HS in Fairfax.

Round 40: Stephen Collum OF from Cartersville HS (GA); did not sign, presumably (per baseballcube) went to Cleveland State Community College but has no college stats and was never again drafted.

Round 41: Bryce Ortega 3B Coll Sr. from Univ. of Arizona: had a decent season in 2012 for Hagerstown then either was released or retired.

Round 42: David Kerian SS from Bishop Heelan HS (IA): did not sign, honored his commitment to U of Illinois. Signed by the Nats as a 9th round senior sign in 2015.

Round 43: Mitchell Morales SS from Wellington Community HS; did not sign, went to Florida Atlantic University and was drafted 3 years later in 2014 by San Diego in the 29th round. Struggled in lower A leagues in 2015.

Round 44: Matt Snyder 1B Coll Jr Univ. of Mississippi: did not sign, returned to Ole Miss for his senior year and was a 10th round pick the following year by New York Yankees. Hit .371 for High-A this year to push his way to AA.

Round 45: Richie Mirowski RHP Coll Sr. from Oklahoma Baptist Univ: had a fantastic 2013 in Potomac, struggled making the jump to AA in 2014 and was released on 3/19/15 when it looked like he wasn’t going to make the AA team for this year. Still, a great result for a 45th round draftee.

Round 46: Tyler Thompson OF Coll JR from Univ. of Florida: did not sign, returned to Florida for his senior year. Got hurt (presumably) and was not drafted after 2012 and never played professionally.

Round 47: Timothy Montgomery LHP from Rockmart HS (GA): did not sign, took a year off, played one year at Berry College and was out of the game.

Round 48: Michael Bisenius OF Coll Jr from Wayne State College (NE): did not sign, returned to college for his senior year, never again drafted. Played on year with the Sioux City Explorers in the American Association.

Round 49: Hunter Cole OF from Dorman HS (SC), did not sign, honored his commitment to the U of Georgia. 26th round pick in 2014 by San Francisco. Hitting well so far in his career, finishing 2015 in AA with above an .800 OPS.

Round 50: Anthony Nix OF Coll Sr from Univ. of California-Riverside: hit .215 in the GCL in 2012 and was released in Jan 2013.

Well, now you know why we don’t need 50 rounds anymore. Of the original 51 total picks (three 1st rounders and a lost 2nd rounder total 51 total guys in this class), fully 21 didn’t even sign. That’s more than 40% of the draftees. So of the 29 guys who did sign, a slew remain active in the system, our 1st rounder (Rendon) has turned into a 6-win player (when healthy), we flipped two guys (Meyer, Burns) who are also MLB matriculated for other MLB players of use, and we have a couple more guys who may yet get chances (Harper, Hill, Lee). That’s not a bad return from a draft class, especially considering how many of the 20th+ rounders ended up being successful.

Lucas Giolito still leads the line of the Nats 2012 draft class. Photo unk via federalbaseball.com

(Useless blog information: this is my 900th post! And we’ve had nearly 7,500 comments on those posts; that’s fantastic. )

The next in a series: previously we reviewed the 2015 season stats for the 2015 draft class, 2014 draft class, and the 2013 draft class. Like with the 2013 post, this one was easier to do thanks to having done the 2012 guys back in 2013 time-frame. Is it worth going back one or two more draft classes at this point? Maybe not; the 2012 draft class has mostly already been Rule-5 exposed, a good benchmark for prospects to make it or break it in terms of advancement or resignation as “org guy.” I have gone back one more class to 2011 and that’s it, so one more in this series after this.

Web links to use while reading:

Stats are pulled from milb.com and/or fangraphs.com; put the player name into the search bar to get his seasonal stats

The MLB Draft Tracker (which I believe is the best draft tracker out there) is the best place to get draft class information.

TheBaseballCube.com for really obscure stats for players, like college stats for these upper round 30s guys.

Without further ado:

Round 1: (#16 overall) Lucas Giolito HS RH Starting pitcher: 7-7, 3.15 ERA across two levels, starting at HighA and moved up to AA. 131/37 K/BB in 117 IP (21 “starts”) with 1.96/3.18 fip, and .352/.341 babip splits between HighA/AA. A fantastic season for the newly-turned 21-yr old, who dominated HighA before moving up and holding his own in AA for the last two months of the season. All the pre-season talk about how he was going to have “no innings limits” was bunk; he was kept in XST until the first week of May and routinely skipped starts so as to extend him through the whole season while keeping his innings year-over-year increase just below the magical 20% mark (98 IP in 2014, 117 in 2015). He’s now routinely named as either the best or the 2nd best (behind LA’s Julio Urias) pitching prospect in all of baseball. Not much else to say. I’m guessing he starts 2016 in AA, moves to AAA and may even get tapped once he surpasses the Super-2 deadline as an injury fill-in starter in the majors. Look for him to get about 140 innings in 2016 all told (that’s 20% bump from his 2015 117 total). Trending Up.

Round 2: (80) Tony Renda, Coll Jr 2B: .267/.333/.340 in Harrisburg with 15/19 K/BB ratio and 13 SBs in a little less than a half a season in AA before he was traded to the Yankees on 6/11/15 for David Carpenter. Renda had progressed nicely in the system as a defense and speed-first second baseman, but in the immediate seems like he was blocked by Wilmer Difo, perhaps the rising of Chris Bostick and the presence in the majors of three or four different guys who can play an adequate second base. So the team flipped him for something they needed; reliever depth.

Round 3: (111) Brett Mooneyham, Coll Jr LH starting pitcher: was 0-2 with a 6.41 ERA in 19 ineffective innings for LowA Hagerstown before the Nats finally cut the cord and released him on 6/3/15. Mooneyham was in Low-A for the third successive season, having failed to make the cut in Potomac in each of 2013 and 2014. You’d have to say that he’s one of the more higher-profile drafting failures of the Mike Rizzo era. Or maybe not; the team had to go over-slot to sign Giolito and may have skimped for the rest of the draft.

Round 4: (144) Brandon Miller Coll Sr Corner OF: .226/.301/.421 in 59 games with Potomac before voluntarily retiring on 7/10/15. Despite showing some power (he hit 20 homers in the 2013 season), he never really solved HighA and made way in the Potomac outfield for some rising DSL grads.

Round 5: (174) Spencer Kieboom, Coll Jr C: Slashed .248/.344/.346 with 30/36 K/BB in 246 ABs with Potomac, which were incremental steps back from his great low-A numbers in 2014. He missed a good portion of the season with injury (concussion) and is currently playing in the Arizona Fall League to make up for it. He was starting to get some notice in the organization, appearing in the tail end of top-30 prospect lists. Despite his step back in offense, Kieboom has taken a huge step forward in terms of his defense, his play-calling and pitch-framing. Scouting reports on him are glowing in this regard, with most projecting him at worst as a backup catcher in the bigs because of his defensive capability. I think he starts 2016 in AA with an eye towards getting his bat back on track, and if he keeps producing he could soon be a viable alternative to the current catching tandem in the majors. Trending up.

Round 6: (204) Hayden Jennings, HS OF/CF: Released in May 2014 after two years in the GCL with big K numbers.

Round 7: (234) Robert Benincasa, Coll Jr. RH relief pitcher: Just 4 IP for Harrisburg this year until suffering a season-ending injury. He made the AA bullpen out of spring (which is where he ended the 2014 season) and seemed to be in a decent spot but got almost no playing time. Minor league relievers generally don’t get a lot of love from prospect hounds, but in a system where an able-bodied RHP who could throw strikes would have been nice to have in August and September, there’s still opportunity for Benincasa going forward. Trending Steady if he’s healthy, looking at a ST2016 release if not.

Round 8: (264) Stephen Perez, Coll Jr. SS: slashed just .209/.302/.280 with 87/59 K/BB in 435 ABs between Potomac and Harrisburg. 2 homers, 16 steals. Perez broke camp with Harrisburg but couldn’t cut it, hitting just .130 in April before getting dumped back to repeat High-A. In 1300+ career minor league ABs he’s now hitting just .233 and doesn’t seem like he’s long for the organization. As mentioned in this space before, the Nats drafted a ton of college middle infielders in 2015 and Perez may struggle to keep his slot given what’s expected to rise up. Trending down.

Round 9:(294) Derek Self, Coll Sr. RH relief pitcher: 4-5, 3.56 ERA with 45/15 K/BB in 60ip. 3.71 fip, .291 BABIP in Potomac. Broke camp as a member of the AA bullpen but got hit and was dumped back to high-A, where he spent most of the season. This is the third straight year he’s been in Potomac as a college senior draftee; odds are there won’t be a 4th. He may break camp with a full season squad in 2016 but may fall victim to a numbers game once the short-season guys start pushing for promotions. Trending down.

Round 10: (324) Craig Manuel, Coll Sr C: slashed just .206/.276/.242 between three levels but mostly with Potomac. He had just 165 ABs on the year as he served as the backup catcher in High-A. Its his third straight season of essentially being an “old for the level” backup catcher who has struggled to hit the Mendoza Line since leaving Low-A. Its hard to read the tea-leaves on catchers since they’re so scarce, so I won’t summarily pass judgement that Manuel’s time is about to come to an end. He could very well be the backup catcher again in Potomac next year. He is a local guy (born in Rockville, MD though he went to HS in Florida and college in Texas), so perhaps he enjoys playing in the DC area. Otherwise, just based on his offensive numbers I have to say he’s Trending Down.

Round 11: (354) Brian Rauh, Coll Jr RH starter/reliever: 4-7, 3.39 ERA with 84/24 K/BB ratio in 101 innings (18 starts) across *four* different levels. 2.61/4.95 fip in Potomac/Harrisburg where he spent the most time this year. Rauh had a nice tour of the system this year, starting in High-A (he was the #2 opening day starter), getting hurt, doing some rehab in the GCL, then working his way back up the chain from Low-A to High-A to AA. He ended the year in Harrisburg’s rotation, for what its worth. He didn’t entirely impress at AA but had an incrementally better season in High-A. My guess is that he starts the 2016 season in the AA rotation, but he has to show he’s worthy in AA. Trending Steady.

Round 12: (384) Carlos Lopez, Coll Sr 1B: Slashed just .138/.265/.241 in 10 games in Hagerstown before being released on 6/30/15. This was the third straight season that Lopez featured in Hagerstown, having spent the first two months of the season in XST after getting beat out for the 1B job in the spring. Eventually there just was no more room for Lopez, with uber prospect Jose Marmolejos-Diaz soon taking over at 1B in Hagerstown and slugging 11 homers in a half-season.

Round 13: (414) Elliott Waterman, Coll Jr LH reliever: Struggled in two Short-A stints and was released on 3/15/14 prior to the beginning of the 2014 season when he couldn’t break into a full-season bullpen.

Round 14: (444) Jordan Poole, Juco-2 corner OF: Similarly to Waterman above, Poole struggled to hit in two seasons shuttling between Short-A and GCL, and the Nats released him on 3/14/14 when he wasn’t set to make a full season roster.

Round 15: (474) Brandon Smith, OF:Didn’t sign. Attending Division II Grand Canyon University, where he remains today. He hit a robust .348/.402/.478 for them this season but was not drafted as a draft-eligible junior. Maybe the Nats take a flier on him in a late round since they love doing re-drafts on late-round HS picks.

Round 16: (504) Ronald Pena, Juco-2 RH starter/reliever: threw just four rehab innings in 2015, spending the entire season on the Potomac Disabled List. He was coming off a season where he had a 5.96 ERA in High-A and needed 2015 to show he could make the jump. My guess is that he’ll get another shot at being the Potomac swing-man in 2016 but he may struggle to make the squad, given the huge number of college arms pushing into the system year after year. Trending Down.

Round 17: (534) Blake Schwartz, Coll Sr RH Starting pitcher: 0-2, 5.87 ERA in 3 Potomac starts and then he called it quits, officially retiring on 4/24/15. Schwartz was *so good* in 2013 for Potomac (11-4, 2.65 ERA) then struggled in AA before getting hurt in 2014 and missing half the season. I thought the retirement was surprising; maybe his 2014 injury just killed his arm and with it his career. Too bad; he was looking like a fantastic low-round find.

Round 18: (564) David Fischer, Coll Sr RH reliever: Released on 7/3/14 after bouncing around the system for a couple of years.

Round 19: (594) Bryan Lippincott, Coll Sr 1B: Retired ahead of the 2014 season after one decent season in Short-A.

Round 20: (624) James Brooks, Coll SR SS/3B: Released May 2013; he was a senior sign who played last season mostly in the GCL, save for a 2 week stretch where he went 1-32 in Short-A.

Round 21: (654) Austin Chubb, Coll Sr C: Released ahead of the 2015 season after struggling to a .221/.299/.324 line in Hagerstown in 2014. Signed as a MLFA with Los Angeles and bounced around their farm system this year, missing huge chunks of the season with injury. Backup Catchers can live forever.

Round 25: (774) Freddy Avis, RHP: didn’t sign. Attending Stanford, where in 2013 he appeared in exactly one game and pitched 2 innings before suffering a season-ending injury. That injury never got better and he retired from baseball altogether in March of 2015. Shame.

Round 26: (804) Skye Bolt, RHP: didn’t sign. Attended UNC, had an excellent college career and was a 4th round pick in 2015 by the Oakland A’s. He kind of reminds me of our 2015 pick Andrew Stevenson frankly; kind of an odd swing, defense-first speedy outfielder with limited power.

Round 29: (894) Leonard “LJ” Hollins, Juco RH reliever: released 7/2/14 after struggling for half a season in Hagerstown.

Round 30: (924) Robert Orlan Coll Jr LH Starter: 3-1, 3.00 ERA with 85/28 K/BB ratio in 72 relief IP between LowA and HighA. Orlan bounced between Potomac and Hagerstown all season, ending up in HighA with pretty good numbers in a “more than a loogy” role. Especially impressive is 85 Ks in just 72 ip. He’s older for these levels, inarguably, but could put himself in a good position by continuing to succeed in 2016. I see him in the Potomac bullpen again with an eye towards a June promotion to AA when the short-season promotions come due. Trending Steady.

Round 31: (954) Michael Boyden Coll Sr RH reliever: Released Jan 2014 after struggling for two years in Rookie ball as a college senior sign.

Round 36: Max Ungar, C: didn’t sign. Attending Division III Denison, where he did not seem to even be playing.

Round 37: Tyler Watson, LHP: didn’t sign. Attended Kansas U for a year, then bounced to McLennan Community College in Waco, TX and and got drafted by the Angels in the 38th round of the 2014 draft. This is *not* the same Tyler Watson, by the way, that the Nats drafted in the 2015 draft.

Round 38: Jarred Messer, RHP: didn’t sign. Pitched the last two years with the Kansas City T-Bones in the independent American Association

Round 39: Mitchell Williams, C: didn’t sign. Attended the Marion Military Institute in Alabama, for which I cannot find any current stats.

Round 40: Ricky Gutierrez, CF: didn’t sign. Presumably playing football for U-Conn, as per the Draft Tracker.

Three years onward, there’s just 10 of the 40 names left active somewhere in the minors. 11 never signed and another 19 have been released or retired. We cashed in Renda on a middle reliever who subsequently got hurt, and this class has one of the best 2 or 3 prospects in the game. Otherwise … there’s just not much there. It seems likely that the Nats 2012 class is going to end up producing just two MLB players; a near Ace and possibly a backup Catcher. Maybe one of the trending steady middle relievers can make a run ala Aaron Barrett. Otherwise, is this class a disappointment?

All our full-season squads have been announced, and its time to start looking at the pitching staffs.

I never got to doing my massive reviews of the rotations of the various farm system teams this past off-season (job change, less free time at home, they being a ton of work, etc). Which also led to my not doing any predictions on where our pitchers would start the 2015 season. Which is a bummer, because it is always fun to see if my predictions were decent and to see how player movement has affected the squads. Lets go team by team and (focusing on the rotations) look at how things have changed since the end of last season.

Discussion: We’ve certainly talked this through. Quickly; Fister‘s 2014 spring training injury opened the door for both Roark and Jordan to duke it out for the 2014 5th starter job, eventually won by Roark, who gave the team a 5-win season as the 5th starter. That wasn’t enough for the Nats though; committing $210M on Scherzer for the next decade or so, pushing Roark to mop-up guy/insurance starter for opening of 2015.

Manager Matt Williams also shook up the 2015 rotation order, installing the starters by accomplishment, not by reputation. Thus 3-year running opening day starter Strasburg is dropped to the #3 hole, and last year’s #2 Gonzalez is now basically the #5 starter.

Enough about the MLB discussion though; lets get to the minor league rotations.

All four full season minor league squads are announced here by Nats Journal. In some cases we know who the rotation will be, in other cases the below is a huge guess. Especially at Hagerstown (as we’ll see).

A late spring training injury to Casey Janssen has called presumed AAA starter Blake Treinen into action in the Nats bullpen, perhaps for the long run. Which has opened up a couple of spots in the Syracuse rotation … and they’ve been surprisingly filled. Instead of installing who I presumed to be the 5th AAA starter (trade acquisition Felipe Rivero), the team has announced that 2014 MLFA signing/rubber-armed swingman Scott McGregor and 2015 MLFA Bruce Billings will fill out the rotation.

Changes from 2014? Rosenbaum traded for catcher depth, Tatusko to Korea, Poveda remains an unsigned MLFA, and Laffey signed a new MLFA deal with Colorado.

One has to think that McGregor/Billings are temporary holds in the rotation until Treinen returns. The conversion of Rivero to the bullpen is more interesting; the team is rather short on lefty starters in the system right now (thanks to a slew of upper-end draft pick lefty starters failing in the past few years … ahem Solis, Purke, Mooneyham, Turnbull). As we’ll see later on, there’s nobody really that makes sense to supplant any of these guys as a starter from AA or XST.

Harrisburg went through an awful lot of starters last year. 19 guys got starts, 15 of which were not just one-offs. From last year’s opening day, Schwartz got demoted after putting up a 7+ ERA and then hurt, Gilliam got hurt, and Purke had Tommy John surgery. By the end of the season, only Rivero remained in the rotation, though he spent a good spell on the D/L as well. Dupra got 12 starts and 24 appearances and was medicore (5.60 ERA), Poveda had great ratios (39Ks in 32innings) but an ugly era (5.34), and MLFA Kroenke was abhorrent (6.72 ERA).

Returning for 2015 are Austin Voth, the 2013 draft pick who shot up two levels last year, and last year’s MLFA Paolo Espino, who has re-upped with the team for 2015. They are joined by newly acquired Joe Ross, MLFA Tim Alderson and the surprising Matt Swynenberg (who was closer to retirement than a rotation gig this time last year). I have 2015 MLFA Richard Bleier as a swingman/spot starter for now. This rotation may be augmented by some of the Missing/XST arms (see later discussion).

Lots of turnover in the Potomac rotation as well; 14 guys got starts from last year. Dakota Bacus, Brian Rauh, and Matthew Spann are reprising their roles as starters from the end of last season, while two others (Dickson and Sylvestre) remain in XST limbo for now. What happened to the rest of these guys? Brett Mooneyham and Nick Lee posted ERAs of 7.36 and 10.05 respectively and were both demoted. Encarnacion was nearly as bad and was outright released by the organization earlier this past off-season.

Luckily, we kind of already know that the opening day rotation is going to change: we know where two of the organization’s brightest arms are heading. Giolito and Lopez should supplant Bacus and Rauh, making for a rather formidable Potomac rotation.

Well; Hagerstown’s rotation should be … interesting. When you look at the assigned arms, there’s only three clear-cut starters from last year. So clearly either the Hagerstown team will be getting reinforcements from the XST list or there’s guys being converted from 2014 relievers to 2015 starters.

Pivetta and Giolito were the mainstays from last year; both will be in high-A at some point soon. Ott was flipped as a throw-in with the Steven Souza deal. Its hard to pass judgement on this rotation until we talk about those in XST.

The title of my previous post was pretty simple: “Nats 2014 Draft == failure.” And it resulted in a rather spirited debate in the comments about the 2014 draft, the 2008 draft in hindsight, etc.

In that debate, I postulated my benchmarks for judging whether or not a team’s draft was “good” or not. Here were the six guidelines I stated for judgement, going round by round/section by section in the draft:

a. 1st rounder: future MLB above average regular to all-star

b. 2nd rounder: future MLB regular

c. 3rd-5th: expect at least one future MLB player in at least a backup/bullpen role

d. 6th-10th: hope for at least one player to reach the MLB level.

e. 11th-20th: hope for at least three players who matriculate to AA or higher

f. 20th and above: hope for one-two players to matriculate to AA or higher

Lets go back through all 10 Nats drafts and see whether these guidelines hold up. For each of the 6 requirements, we’ll give a quick “yes/no the condition was met” for each year. Critical to this analysis is the Nats DraftTracker XLS, milb.com and baseball-reference.com for searching for old players. Also useful is the Baseball America executive database, which populated the staff in charge of each draft.

Editors Note post-posting: I’ve added in the total known bonus amounts, per suggestion in the comments. Data taken from the Draft Tracker. Actual figures are likely higher because most bonus figures past the 10th round are unknown (but likely minimal). Also per good suggestion, I’m adding in the draft position for context, since its far easier to get a future all-star if picking in the top 5 versus later on.

d. Yes: 6th rounder Marco Estrada has turned into a decent starter (albeit for someone else after we released him)

e. Yes: 11th rounder John Lannan and 12th rounder Craig Stammen turned into MLBers, far above expectations here. 18th rounder Tim Pahuta had long ML career for us, playing 3 years at AA.

f. Yes: 33rd rounder Ryan Butcher was a 6yr MLFA who left the org but now has MLB experience with Atlanta. No other 20th+ round draftees made it out of A-ball, but Butcher’s MLB matriculation makes up for it.

2005: Success, inarguably. 6 guys matriculating to the majors is a winning draft, especially considering the lack of a 2nd or 3rd round pick, the ownership confusion, and the budget restrictions put on the team.

a. No: 1st rounder Chris Marrero looks like a 4-a guy at best and 1st rounder Colten Willems never made it above A-ball.

b. No: the team failed to sign 2nd rounder Sean Black and 2nd rounder Stephen Englund never made it out of low-A.

c. No: none of their 3rd-5th picks made the majors. The highest one of these guys got was 5th rounder Corey VanAllen, who did pitch in AAA after passing through the rule-5 draft and finished out his 6-years with the org. VanAllen is in Indy ball in 2014.

d. No: they didn’t even sign their 7th, 9th or 10th round picks. The closest they got to a MLBer here was 6th rounder Zech Zinicola, who played at AAA for quite a while, was rule-5 picked and returned, and now sits in Baltimore’s AA team.

e. Yes: 12th rounder Cole Kimball made it the majors briefly, while 17th rounder Erik Arnesen, 18th rounder Adam Carr and 13th rounder Hassan Pena all toiled in AAA for several years.

f. Yes, sort of. We’re all well aware of the success of 41st rounder Brad Peacock, but he was picked under the “draft-and-follow” system that no longer exists. So while yes it was a 41st round pick, in our current system Peacock wouldn’t have been picked at all and/or wouldn’t have signed but would have been picked the subsequent year based on his great first-college juco season. Of the rest of the 20th+ round picks, one guy had a couple months in AA (26th rounder Brett Logan) to serve as a backup catcher; he hit .102/.170/.122 in 20 games in 2007 and was released.

2006: Failure: 3 guys who have MLB appearances but near zero impact for this team. Peacock enabled the Nats to get Gio Gonzalez but I think we see now that Peacock wasn’t the driving prospect in that deal (now that Derek Norris has made an all-star team).

For as much as went right for the team in the 2005 draft, it went wrong in 2006. Was the lack of signing their 7th, 9th and 10th round picks evident of “fiscal restraint” demanded by the other 29 owners? Clearly to me, the focus on HS drafted personnel in this draft has Bowden’s hands all over it, and almost none of them panned out in the slightest.

a. No: The team went one-for-three on its first rounders: Michael Burgess got to AA in his fourth pro season but never further, was flipped for Tom Gorzelanny. Josh Smoker‘s failure has been well documented here. But Ross Detwiler, for all the complaining about his usage and role in this space, did make the majors and looked like a good 4th starter (in 2012). I still believe he could start in this league and is better than a long-man. However, the condition is that a first round pick turns into a successful regular, and this crop failed in all regards.

b. Yes. 2nd rounder Jordan Zimmermann is now a 2-time all-star and is probably the best 2nd round pick the organization has ever had. His successes make up for their other 2nd rounder Jake Smolinksi who has made his MLB debut but not until he became a 6-yr MLFA.

c. Yes. 4th rounder Derek Norris made the 2014 all-star team for Oakland. 3rd rounder Stephen Souza has debuted in the majors and looks quite promising (albeit blocked) for our AAA team. 5th rounder Brad Meyers toiled for us in AAA for years before being released this spring after a long injury recovery.

d. Yes: 10th round pick Patrick McCoy made it to AAA for us, signed with Detroit as a MLFA and debuted this year. We should note for the record though that 6th rounder Jack McGeary was paid as if he was a low-1st rounder and failed pretty spectacularly here.

e. Yes: 20th rounder Jeff Mandel was a long-serving org arm at AA and AAA. 11th rounder Bill Rhinehart was looking like a find, appearning on Nats system prospect lists for a while and getting to AAA before getting flipped for Jonny Gomes.

f. Yes: 28th rounder Boomer Whiting made it to Syracuse before getting released in 2011. 48th rounder (!) Kyle Gunderson was flipped for Logan Kensing in 2009 and made it to Miami/Florida’s AAA squad before getting released.

2007: Success: despite the 1st round failures and the McGeary disaster, the breadth of success in the other categories and the production of the remaining guys weighs out.

a. No: as is well documented, the Nats failed to sign 1st round pick Aaron Crow.

b. No/Inc: 2nd round pick Destin Hood has already passed through Rule-5 waivers once, but has found himself in 2014 and is hitting great for Syracuse (2014’s AAA line: .308/.353/.502). It does make one wonder if he’s worth adding to the 40-man once the season is over to keep him; he’s finishing his 7th pro year and is in line for minor league free agency.

c. Yes: 3rd rounder Danny Espinosa has his critics, but he’s at least a MLB backup or possibly more. 5th rounder Adrian Nieto has stuck with the White Sox after getting plucked in the Rule-5 draft last year and hasn’t been half bad.

d. Yes: 10th rounder Tommy Milone has shown his capabilities as a MLB starter. d. 6th-10th: hope for at least one player to reach the MLB level. 6th rounder Paul Demny remains in the system (on the D/L in Harrisburg) but doesn’t seem like he’ll go much higher at this point.

e. Yes: 16th rounder Tyler Moore has put in meaningful at-bats for the Nats for a few years now. And 19th rounder Steve Lombardozzi looks to be a solid utility/backup infielder in this league for years. Lastly I wonder if the team gave up on 15th rounder J.P. Ramirez too soon; he was paid like a 2nd round pick but was released prior to his MLFA period. He may have only made it to high-A, but his last season was somewhat decent.

f. No: as far as I can tell, nobody of note came in rounds 20 or above from this draft.

2008: Failure: How would you judge this draft? We failed to sign the first rounder, which for me is a huge negative. The second rounder may or may not ever debut in the majors, which is also for me a huge negative because of the huge prevalence of 1st and 2nd rounders on MLB rosters. But we got four (5 counting Nieto) other MLBers out of the rest of the draft, including some very deep-dive picks that you rarely find (Moore and Lombardozzi, aside from Peacock, are the two lowest round picks to ever make it to the majors for this team).

a. Yes: no arguing about either first round pick here: both Stephen Strasburg and Drew Storen have pitched at all-star levels in their careers.

b. No: 2nd Rounder Jeff Kobernus may have made his MLB debut, but he’s nowhere close to being a “regular” in the majors right now and doens’t seem to be trending that way either.

c. No: 3rd round pick Trevor Holder was a gross over-draft (albeit with known reasons; the team committed an *awful* lot of money to the first two guys on this list) and was released in 2013. 4th rounder A.J. Morris looked quite promising for us, was flipped in the Gorzelanny deal, and this year is pitching effectively for Pittsburgh’s AAA squad after being taken in the minor league Rule-5 portion last off-season. And the Nats failed to sign their 5th rounder. So even if Morris pans out as a MLB-capable player, he’s doing it for someone else.

d. Yes: 9th round pick Taylor Jordan was effective for the team last year and may yet figure in the team’s plans despite his mysterious D/L trip right now. And 6th round pick Michael Taylor has rocketed up the prospect lists for this team, is crushing AA pitching right now, is on the team’s 40-man roster and may very well get a look as 2015’s starting center fielder.

e. Yes: 12th rounder Nathan Karns made the org look quite intelligent when he gave spot starts in 2013 after rocketing up the farm system after finally recovering from arm issues. I wonder if the success they had with Karns was the first impetus for Rizzo to take more gambles on high-end-but-injured arms. 13th rounder Patrick Lehman has bounced around as an org arm for years. 11th rounder Juston Bloxom played a couple years in AA before getting released this year. 16th rounder Sean Nicol is splitting time between AA and AAA this year. Finally, I wanted to note something I never knew before studying this: the Nats drafted Marcus Strohman in the 18th round out of HS; this is the same Strohman who went in the first round three years later to Toronto and who is currently holding down a rotation spot for the playoff-pushing Blue Jays. Wow. He’s listed as a SS on the draft-tracker but clearly is a MLB-calibre starter.

f. Yes: 22nd rounder Danny Rosenbaum has been Syracuse’s “ace” for three seasons now. And a slew of guys drafted in the 20s stuck around for years as middle relievers (Mitchell Clegg, Matt Swynenberg, Evan Bronson, Rob Wort, and Shane McCatty). You just can’t ask for more out of your picks in rounds 20-30.

2009: Success: I’ll take a couple of misses in the 2nd and 3rd rounds given the amount of talent they picked up in the middle and late rounds. Great draft. 6 guys who have debuted in the majors with at least another one likely coming soon.

Note: from 2010 onwards, most of the judgement calls are still “in progress.” We’ll use projections and “small sample sizes” to pass judgement. It is what it is. Feel free to criticize in the comments about using projections and national pundit scouting reports to make judgements.

a. Yes: 1st rounder Bryce Harper has turned into everything the hype suggested. Fun fact; when he went on an rehab assignment in Potomac, he was the 2nd youngest guy on the roster. Remember that when you criticize the guy for not being better than he already is: if he was “playing by the rules,” he’d be jsut finishing his junior year of college.

b. No/Inc: 2nd rounder Sammy Solis has been one injury issue after another. He missed all of 2012 with Tommy John, came back slowly in 2013, but now sits on the AA D/L with another “elbow” issue. He was protected on the 40-man roster last fall, but you have to wonder what’s to come of him. He’s finishing his 5th pro season and he’s got exactly one start above A-Ball.

c. Yes/Inc: 4th rounder A.J. Cole was paid like a late first rounder, and after some struggles he’s really come onto the scene this year. He was already really young for AA and “solved” it, and is now in AAA holding his own. The other guys in this category are less impressive: both Rick Hague and Jason Martinson are repeating AA and not really hitting well enough to push for promotions. This could be a side-effect of the huge amount of money committed to Harper and Cole.

d. Yes: 9th round pick Aaron Barrett went from unknown/unrecognized prospect to the Nats 40-man roster last fall to being lights-out middle reliever in the major league pen this year. As a 9th round college senior pick. 8th rounder Matthew Grace may be next; after toiling as a mediocre starter, he became a reliever in 2013 and has been lights out in AA and AAA this year. And he’s not just a LOOGY: 56 IP in 33 appearances and he’s given up just 6 ER in that time.

e. Yes: 15th round pick David Freitas, after getting traded to Oakland for Kurt Suzuki, got traded again to Baltimore and now is in AAA. 12th round pick Robbie Ray has made his MLB debut for Detroit after going over in the Doug Fister deal. 11th rounder Neil Holland toils in the Harrisburg pen admirably.

f. Yes: 23rd rounder Colin Bates and 26th rounder Christopher Manno both are in the Harrisburg pen. 22nd rounder Cameron Selik made it to AA before hitting his ceiling and being released earlier this year. And 32nd rounder Randolph Oduber is a starting OF in Potomac with decent splits and a shot of moving up.

2010: Success: It may have been a no-brainer to take Harper, and it may have been an example of the “checkbook” winning in their picks of Cole and Ray, but you have to hand it to this team; they bought two high-end prep guys out of their college and they’re both looking like huge successes. And they got a MLB servicable reliever out of a college senior sign who they paid just $35,000 in bonus money. Great work.

a. Yes: 1st rounder Anthony Rendon was on everyone’s “all star snub” lists this year, while their other 1st rounder Alex Meyer remains one of the top pitching prospects in the game and seems likely to debut later this year. Their supp-1st rounder Brian Goodwin remains on every pundit’s prospect lists even if he seemingly has been passed on the organizational “future starting Center-fielder” depth chart. There’s no chance the team leaves him exposed in the upcoming rule-5 draft, so he’ll have at least three more years to prove he belongs.

b. n/a: forfeited for Adam LaRoche signing.

c. No/Inc: Right now our 3rd through 5th picks are looking iffy; 4th rounder Matthew Purke was paid like an upper first rounder and has been a massive disappointment. Right now he’s recovering from Tommy John and faces an uncertain future. 4th rounder Kylin Turnbull has gotten lit up in high-A this year, his second crack at the league. 5th rounder Matt Skole may be the most promising of the bunch; he crushed 27 homers in his first season of full-season ball only to miss all of 2013 because of a freak injury. Can Skole continue developing and make the majors on a full-time basis? Can Purke at this point?

d. Yes: With the call-up of 6th rounder Taylor Hill earlier this year, this category is met. Which is good because the rest of the 6th-10th rounders from this year are struggling. Two are already released/retired, one is MIA and the lone remaining active player (Brian Dupra) is struggling as a starter/swing-man in AA. But Hill is a huge win; a college senior draftee on minimal bonus rocketing through the minors and forcing his way onto the 25-man roster.

e. Yes/Inc: It is far too early to fully judge this category, but it is looking promising despite the fact that the team failed to sign SIX of its ten picks beween the 11th and 20th round. 11th rounder Caleb Ramsey is already in AA. 16th rounder Deion Williams is on the mound (not a SS as in the Draft Tracker) and is struggling in short-A. 18th rounder Nick Lee is struggling in Potomac this year but has shown a huge arm and seems like he’ll eventually convert to loogy (especially considering his undersized stature); I can see Lee making it far as a matchup lefty reliever with swing-and-miss stuff. The lone failure at this point is 12th rounder Blake Monar, sort of inexplicably released after a decent 2012 season in Short-A.

f. Yes: 30th round pick Bryan Harper earned his way to Harrisburg. 45th round college senior pick Richie Mirowski also made it to AA, where he wasn’t half bad last year, though at the moment he’s back in Potomac. And there’s three other players drafted in the 20th or higher who are active on Potomac’s roster this year and who may get moved up. Decent production out of the bottom of this draft so far.

2011: Projected Success: As discussed before, I believe the selection of Rendon was a “no-brainer” based on a unique set of circumstances that occured on draft day, but credit the management team for having the stones to pick him when other GMs didn’t. I’m sure the Mariners (especially) would like a re-do on that draft (they picked 2nd overall, got soft-tossing local product Danny Hultzen, who was sidelined last year with all sorts of shoulder issues and is no sure bet to ever make it back. They rolled the dice with Purke and so far seem to be losing, but Purke was himself a 1-1 talent at one point (remember, he had his $4M+ deal with Texas pulled thanks to MLB-stewardship at the time) and was probably worth the risk. I’d like to see Skole reach the majors in some capacity before declaring this draft a full success.

Note: from here onwards, everything is a projection and is based on scouting the stat lines. I’m going to sound negative where others sound positive and vice versa. Hey, its better than writing nothing.

a. Yes/inc: 1st rounder Lucas Giolito (so far) has shown himself to be at full speed post TJ surgery and is mostly in the top 10-15 of every professional scouting pundit’s list for best prospect in the entirety of the minors. He’s got a #1 starter ceiling, a huge frame and three plus pitches. He’s projecting to be everything you’d hope for from an upper first rounder.

b. No/inc: It is hard to squint at 2nd rounder Tony Renda at this point and project him as a future “MLB regular.” Sure he’s hitting .297 in Potomac, and sure his numbers at the plate have not varied much in his three pro seasons. Unfortunately he’s vastly undersized and he has no power in a time where pro middle infielders are expected to provide serious pop. Maybe he can forge a career like Jamey Carroll or like a Jose Altuve, but the odds are against him. I don’t mean to discount the guy because he’s 5’8″ but we all know there’s a significant bias in the industry towards undersized guys. Heck, a pitcher is considered “short” if he isn’t 6’2″ these days.

c. No/inc: So far the guys picked 3rd-5th are also struggling. 3rd rounder Brett Mooneyham‘s struggles are well documented here. 4th rounder Brandon Miller continues to show great power but has missed much of this season with a hamstring injury (he’s on rehab in the GCL as we speak). Lastly 5th rounder Spencer Keiboom suffered a blown UCL that basically cost him the whole 2013 season. He’s got great numbers in low-A this year but is two years too old for the league. Keiboom’s talents more centered on his defense than his bat, so he may still push forward as a future backup catcher. But until he does, this category falls in the “no” side.

d. Maybe/inc: The leading hope for some MLB success out of our 6th-10th round picks right now resides in one of two middle relievers: 7th round pick Robert Benincasa or 9th round pick Derek Self. You never know; one of these guys could turn into the next Aaron Barrett. 8th round SS Stephen Perez made the all-star team this year in Potomac and could feature as a future utility infielder. The team has already released its 6th round pick Hayden Jennings, and their 10th rounder (local Rockville product Craig Manual) was a college senior catcher who is backing up other catchers in the system for the time being). He may continue to hang around but unless he gets a starting gig he’s going to get replaced by someone newer.

e. Yes/inc: 17th rounder Blake Schwartz has already made it to AA, where he struggled and he now sits back in Potomac (where he was great last year, go figure). 11th rounder Brian Rauh got a spot-start in AA last year but has bounced in and out of the Potomac rotation this year. 16th rounder Ronald Pena is working his way off injury but faces a long road to move up thanks to a lack of swing-and-miss stuff. The team has already released four of its 11th-20th round picks; the remaining out-field players (12th rounder Carlos Lopez and 19th rounder Bryan Lippincott) both seem to face long odds as college senior draftees still residing in the low minors to even make it up to AA at this point. To be fair, Lopez missed most of 2013 with an unknown injury, so we’ll give him a slight pass. Lippincott sits in XST right now.

f. No/inc: 33rd rounder Mike McQuillan has hung around and currently serves as a utility guy/bench player for Potomac. A couple of relievers remain on squads: 29th rounder Leonard Hollins is hurt but is on a full-season squad, and 30th rounder Robert Orlan was with Hagerstown to start the season but is back in Auburn. The rest of the 20th round and up guys features carnage; eight college senior draftees already released to go along with 10 unsigned (mostly high schoolers) picks in the later rounds. One unsigned pick looks interesting; all-american freshman UNC player Skye Bolt may be a big-time 2015 draft pick. But otherwise, I’m predicting that we dont’ get even a AA player out of the last 20 rounds of this draft at this point.

2012: Projected Failure: Frankly, this is looking like it may be a one player draft. At this point, I don’t think you can look at *any* other player in this draft and project even a bench/fringe 25-man roster guy besides Giolito. Now ask yourself: if Giolito fulfills expectations and becomes an “ace,” a top 15-20 arm in the majors while the rest of this draft basically becomes high-A and AA filler, does that change your opinion of the draft success/failure?

a. n/a: No 2013 first rounder thanks to the supurfluous signing of Rafael Soriano. As noted at the time, the Nats missed out on players like Sean Manaea, Ryan Stanek or Ian Clarkin, all of whom were available at the time of their lost 1st rounder. Manaea in particular has flourished, rising up prospect list charts and sporting a healthy K/9 rate in high-A this year. I’d like to call this in and among itself a failure (given my reservations about paying for saves in general), but have to admit that Soriano has been pretty durn good this year.

b. No/inc: 2nd rounder Jake Johansen thus far has not lived up to advance billing in his first year in full-season ball. He’s averaging just 4.5 innings per outing and sports a 5.00 ERA and less than a K/inning. I can understand the difficult adjustment to pro ball, but I don’t get how his vaunted velocity and size combination aren’t resulting in more swing-and-miss. He’s given no indication that he can avoid what scouts have been saying all along (that he’s destined for the bullpen), he’s way too wild and way too hittable.

c. Yes/inc: the Nats collection of 3rd rounder Drew Ward, 4th rounder Nick Pivetta and now especially 5th rounder Austin Voth are making this management team look very smart. All Voth has done since forcing his promotion to High-A is give up 10 hits and ONE earned run in 33 innings over five starts. That’s just ridiculous. And he’s doing it while maintaining a 36/5 K/BB ratio. There’s zero reason for him to still be in Potomac at this point. I don’t know what Voth’s ceiling is, but its getting pushed.

d. No/inc: Thanks to the new CBA’s rules, most 6th-10th rounders are throw-away/college senior picks these days. So it’ll be awfully hard to depend on one of them turning into a 25-man roster guy. The best bet out of this draft will be having either 6th rounder Cody Gunter or 7th rounder James Yezzo eventually matriculating to the majors. The other guys in this category were 15k bonus college seniors, one of whom (9th rounder Jake Joyce has *already* been released). Do we think either Gunter or Yezzo projects as a major leaguer? Not right now: Gunter’s struggling in short-A for the 2nd year in a row and Yezzo is an undersized 1B showing little power.

e. Maybe/inc: Right now the pickings for the guys taken 11th-20th look pretty slim too. Three were senior signs who have already been released and we failed to sign our 16th round pick Willie Allen (though can’t fault the Nats for that: doing research on him for last year’s draft review showed all sorts of inconsistencies with him, including whether he’s even still playing baseball in college). But 11th rounder John Simms is looking like a great find; he’s already in the AA rotation and holding his own (though you could argue it was out of need, not performance). Among those left, 10th rounder Brandon Middleton and 15th rounder Isaac Ballou are starting and playing well in Hagerstown, 12th rounder Andrew Cooper is strugging in low-A, 13th rounder John Costa has yet to debut for the team thanks to TJ surgery, and 17th rounder Geoffrey Perrott was a senior catcher who got a grand total of 13 at-bats in 2013 and has remained in XST so far thisyear, perhaps to serve as a bullpen catcher for others remaining in Viera and perhaps because he was hurt most of last year and may still be recovering. If Simms continues to rise and we get a couple more longer-lasting prospects out of this crew, we’ll convert this to a success.

f. Maybe/Inc: The Nats picked seven college seniors in the 21st round or above and so far they’re all with Hagerstown. Middle infielders Cody Dent (22nd rounder) and Willie Medina (31st rounder) both hit in the .220s last year, are hitting in the .220s (or worse) this year, and seem like they may not last the season. However the pitchers in this bunch are looking better and better. 28th rounder Joey Webb has a 2.53 ERA, 30th rounder Ryan Ullmann has as 3.10 ERA and got a high-A up-and-back call-up, and 34th rounder Jake Walsh dominated Low-A and earned a call-up to Potomac. Only 29th rounder Michael Sylvestri seems to be in trouble among these senior signs; after struggling in Short-A last year, he gave up a ton of runs in 6 mid-relief outings and is currently in re-assignment purgatory. What of the non senior-signs? 24th round pick Matthew Derosier is struggling in short-A and 23rd round outfielder Garrett Gordon seems like he’s a bench player in Auburn. But a revelation may be 25th round prep draft pick Travis Ott. He holds a 2.10 ERA through 6 starts in Auburn despite being quite young for the league. So, the trend seems good that we’ll get value out of the bottom part of this draft.

2013: Projected Failure: Sorry to say; no first rounder, a middle reliever out of your 2nd rounder, perhaps a 5th starter out of the 3-5 rounds, and some org filler from the bottom of the draft? How many players from this draft do you realistically project to make the majors?

a. Maybe/inc: 1st rounder Erick Fedde may project as a MLB rotation guy, but he’s not projecting as an ace level arm. So if he comes back from surgery 100%, if he keeps moving up the chain, if he makes the majors and if he has an impact we’ll give this a yes. Lots of ifs.

b. n/a: we failed to sign our 2nd rounder Andrew Suarez.

c. Maybe/inc: The hopes here fall on 3rd rounder Jakson Reetz and 4th rounder Robbie Dickey, since our 5th rounder was a senior lefty out of non-baseball powerhouse Duke. How do we dream on Reetz and Dickey? Maybe Reetz turns into our next Derek Norris while Dickey turns into the next Austin Voth. Lets hope so, because both so far have had rather inauspicious starts in the GCL (Reetz batting .220 and Dickey posting an ERA in the 12s). To be fair Reetz is a kid and Dickey isn’t much older, so we have a long way to go before passing true judgement.

d. No/inc: We failed to sign the 8th round pick Austin Byler (and from reading the tea leaves, it didn’t seem like we were ever even close). Our 7th, 8th and 10th round picks were low-bonus college seniors with little hope of advancing. So this category falls squarely on the shoulders of 6th rounder Austin Williams, who looks ok so far in Short-A.

e. Far too Early: most of these guys who did sign are 15 games into short seasons.

f. Far too Early: most of these guys who did sign are 15 games into short seasons.

2014: Not promising: An injured first rounder, no 2nd rounder, really just a handful of non senior-signs elsewhere in the draft. As I opined in the previous post discussion, I just don’t like the looks of this class.

So. 5200 words later, I think I actually like my guidelines. I think though that the new CBA forces teams into making a bunch of “throw-away” picks in the 6th-10th rounds, so my criteria needs to be adjusted downward for that category in the last few years. Otherwise I think it holds.

What say you?

Editor’s Post-posting thoughts. Based on the analysis above, the franchise has 5 successes and 5 failures (or projected failures) in ten drafts. After up and down drafts the first four years, we had three straight successes in 2009-2011, but now I feel like we’ve had three successive failures from 2012 onwards. Here’s a sobering thought about those successes and failures: lets talk about bonus money spent.

In the 5 drafts I call successes, the team spent (chronologically): $3,990,500, $7,619,300, $18,806,000, $11,413,200 and $11,325,000 in bonus money.

Era 1 may be just the way it used to go; sometimes you’d get wins in the draft, other times you’d strike out. Era 2 was the glory years of Nats drafting, though the cynic may point out that picking three consensus 1-1 talents and spending 8 figures in bonus money wasn’t that hard. Era 3 is more troubling: why has this management team not done better in the CBA/limited bonus era?

Mooneyham is a senior citizen in the NY Penn League. Photo via mlbdraftcountdown.wordpress.com

In early April we looked at the ages of our pitchers on all four full-season squads in comparison to the median ages of all pitchers in their leagues. Now that the short-seasons have started, here’s similar analysis. (Full xls of the raw data is available at this Google XLS link here).

(Note: if you want some thoughts on why I do this, data taxonomy or how I collect the data, see the April 2014 post).

In April, we found (generally speaking) that our full season squads in AAA, AA and High-A were all on average older than their leagues, while Hagerstown in Low-A seemed to have a good spread of youngsters and players who were quite old for the level (Hagerstown’s overall average age was still slightly above the median age of the league for pitchers though). These findings are consistent with the fact that the Nats have tended to draft college pitchers over the past few years, and if a college pitcher doesn’t matriculate a level at a time in his first 2-3 seasons, he’s going to be “old” for the level.

How do our short season squads look? The Short-A team is as of 6/23/14 or about 10 games into the season, while the Rookie data is as of 6/23/14 as well, which was just two games into their season. This means that the rotations will grow likely younger in both leagues as 2014 draftees are added; the median age in the NY Penn league is 22.39, while it is 21.17 in the rookie league; both of those age averages should be above even a typical college junior, were he to be added to the Rookie league roster instead of the Short-A.

Short-A/New York Penn League

Team

First Name

Last Name

DOB

Age as of 9/1/14

Age Status

Auburn (wash)

Cory

Bafidis

8/22/1990

24.03

Really Old

Auburn (wash)

Matthew

Derosier

7/13/1994

20.14

Really Young

Auburn (wash)

Jake

Joyce

8/19/1991

23.04

Old

Auburn (wash)

Reynaldo

Lopez

1/4/1994

20.66

Really Young

Auburn (wash)

Anderson

Martinez

2/22/1993

21.52

Young

Auburn (wash)

Brett

Mooneyham

1/24/1990

24.60

Really Old

Auburn (wash)

David

Napoli

10/3/1990

23.91

Really Old

Auburn (wash)

Robert

Orlan

9/28/1990

23.93

Really Old

Auburn (wash)

Travis

Ott

6/29/1995

19.18

Really Young

Auburn (wash)

Luis

Reyes

9/26/1994

19.93

Really Young

Auburn (wash)

Jefry

Rodriguez

7/26/1993

21.10

Really Young

Auburn (wash)

Mario

Sanchez

10/31/1994

19.84

Really Young

Auburn (wash)

Luis

Torres

6/4/1994

20.24

Really Young

Auburn (wash)

Phillips

Valdez

11/16/1991

22.79

Old

Auburn (wash)

Deion

Williams

11/11/1992

21.80

Young

Auburn (wash)

Deibi

Yrizarri

10/3/1994

19.91

Really Young

Discussion: Unlike the Nats full season squads, its Short-A squad right now is quite young. The average age of this squad is 21.49, well below the league median age of 22.39. Travis Ott is the 2nd youngest pitcher in the entire league, and the Nats team features 5 of the youngest 20 players in the league. I think this is a great sign for the state of the Nats pipeline from the international market, and if these really young arms succeed here they’ll make Hagerstown and Potomac trend younger for next year.

Oldest Guy in the New York Penn League: Mets’ A.J. Pinera, at age 27+, but he’s weird. He’s on their restricted list, and he doesn’t have any stats since 2010. I wonder if he’s beign converted to a coach or something. Our own Brett Mooneyham is among the 10 oldest guys in the league, a clear sign of his troubles thus far in his pro career.

Youngest Guy in the New York Penn League: Boston’s Enfember Martinez, two months younger than our own Ott. He’s a Venezuelan middle reliever who was decent in the GCL last year and is treading water thus far in Short-A.

Percentage of New York Penn League pitchers on MLB 40-man rosters: just 1 of 229 players; Dylan Bundy doing rehab for Baltimore post Tommy John Surgery.

Rookie/Gulf Coast League

Team

First Name

Last Name

DOB

Age as of 9/1/14

Age Status

GCL Nationals

Connor

Bach

6/24/1992

22.19

Old

GCL Nationals

James

Bourque

7/9/1993

21.15

Young

GCL Nationals

John

Costa

5/1/1993

21.34

Old

GCL Nationals

Weston

Davis

7/6/1996

18.15

Really Young

GCL Nationals

Kida

De La Cruz

8/10/1994

20.06

Young

GCL Nationals

John

Feliz

10/28/1993

20.84

Young

GCL Nationals

David

Fischer

4/10/1990

24.39

Really Old

GCL Nationals

Elisaul

Gomez

3/26/1992

22.43

Really Old

GCL Nationals

DJ

Jauss

9/5/1990

23.99

Really Old

GCL Nationals

Samuel

Johns

7/12/1991

23.14

Really Old

GCL Nationals

Domenick

Mancini

9/28/1993

20.93

Young

GCL Nationals

Tyler

Mapes

7/18/1991

23.12

Really Old

GCL Nationals

Chase

McDowell

12/14/1990

23.72

Really Old

GCL Nationals

Jose

Morales

2/12/1995

19.55

Really Young

GCL Nationals

Cole

Plouck

4/25/1994

20.35

Young

GCL Nationals

Jean

Ramirez

10/24/1994

19.85

Young

GCL Nationals

Yorlin

Reynoso

11/20/1995

18.78

Really Young

GCL Nationals

Melvi

Salazar

12/17/1994

19.71

Really Young

GCL Nationals

Kyle

Simmons

9/25/1991

22.93

Really Old

GCL Nationals

Maximo

Valerio

7/22/1995

19.11

Really Young

GCL Nationals

Drew

Van Orden

1/19/1992

22.62

Really Old

GCL Nationals

Daury

Vasquez

11/21/1992

21.78

Old

GCL Nationals

Austen

Williams

12/19/1992

21.70

Old

Discussion: The Nats GCL team is about average for the league: its average squad age is 21.38, slightly more than the league median age of 21.17.

Oldest Guy in the Gulf Coast Rookie League: one Jason Marquis, ex Nats starter, now Philadelphia farm hand. He’s in Florida on a rehab assignment, presumably before heading to Lehigh Valley to toil in their AAA squad for a while. In fact, the bottom of the age list is mostly players doing rehab assignments in their team’s spring training facilities and can mostly be lopped off the discussion (hence why I like using medians instead of averages in this analysis).

Youngest Guy in the Gulf Coast Rookie League: Toronto’s Hansel Rodriguez, who turned 17 in Feburary. He’s the youngest player in this league by half a year. And he may not be long for the league; he’s been hit pretty hard so far. Understandable.

Percentage of Gulf Coast Rookie League pitchers on MLB 40-man rosters: just one of 294; Carlos Perez of Atlanta doing rehab.

Austin Voth was great last year and has been good this year. Photo via mlbdirt

We’re a month into the minor league season and nearly five turns through each minor league system rotation, so lets take a look to see how our starters are doing.

As with the major league rotation review, I’ve assigned grade letters to roughly judge each start done by our minor league staff, and then i’ve tacked on their overall stats for context. Note that I generally give grades to those that get the starts in games, as well as those who pitch “starter length” outings. You’ll see this much more frequently in the low-A section, where Hagerstown clearly has a “two-starter” system going for many of its guys; one guy will throw 5 innings, then the next guy throws 4. So nearly the entire Hagerstown roster is getting “starter grades” right now. I should also caveat that this analysis is “scouting the box score” analysis; I’ve not had a chance to see any of these guys in person, so I can’t comment on the luck factor involved with anyone (stats versus ability) other than inference analysis between ERA and FIP.

For each team I’ll list the current rotation as best as I can make it, then have a second section where we list the guys with spot-starts or who were in the rotation but are no longer (D/L trips, promoted, demoted, etc). Then we’ll discuss, and then list those guys who are pushing for promotions and those guys who are in jeopardy of getting demoted (or, worse, released).

(Note: I wouldn’t be able to do this data tracking or this post without the great daily work by Luke Erickson at www.nationalsprospects.com.) All stats here are as of 5/2/14, which means I grabbed one May start’s worth of stats for a couple of guys here and there.

AAA/Syracuse:

Pitcher

Start Trend Line

W/L

ERA

Whip

FIP

K/BB Ratio

# of innings

Apps/Starts

Roenicke

A (3ip),F,B

0-2

5.84

1.54

4.10

7/7

12

5/3

Tatusko

A/short,B-,B+,A,B

1-3

2.36

0.83

3.87

15/7

26.2

5/5

Treinen

A-> upandback,C/short,B+

0-0

0.87

1.16

3.58

8/5

10.1

3/3

Hill

A,A+,C,A,C

3-1

2.35

0.91

3.68

29/4

30.2

5/5

Poveda

F,F,A,F

1-3

9.82

2.07

5.13

12/10

18.1

4/4

Laffey

A (took Treinen’s spot),A+,D+

2-0

1.80

0.67

1.92

14/2

15

3/1

Rosenbaum

D,A,C-,D/inc (injury)->D/L

1-1

4.50

1.35

4.18

9/5

20

4/4

Rotation Discussion:

A month in and the Syracuse Chiefs are mired in last place (though to be fair, only 3 games separate the entire division). Opening day starter Danny Rosenbaum is already on the D/L with a possible torn UCL, possibly the latest in an epidemic of Tommy John surgeries throughout baseball (there’s been at least 14 MLB pitchers to go under the knife for this already in 2014 and quite a few more minor leaguers; I have a draft post on this topic coming). His replacement in the rotation is journeyman and Ian Desmond-relative Josh Roenicke, who has struggled in his spot-start duties. However, Roenicke isn’t the least effective starter in AAA; that distinction goes to late spring training acquisition Omar Poveda, who has gotten pretty well battered so far in his four starts. One of these two guys likely is making way for recently demoted Taylor Jordan (well, assuming Jordan even makes it to AAA anytime soon; Doug Fister‘s return is complicated by the Nats needing another starter in-between; Jordan likely is sitting in AAA limbo until tuesday 5/6, then will settle into the AAA rotation).

Meanwhile, we’re seeing excellent springs so far out of Ryan Tatusko, Blake Treinen (albeit in a SSS thanks to his being bounced up and down out of the Nats bullpen), Aaron Laffey and especially Taylor Hill. Hill’s excellent 29/4 K/BB ratio stands out, as well as his sub 1.00 whip so far in 5 starts. I think its fair to say that nobody expected him to have rocketed up the system like he has, given the fact that he was a college senior draftee with limited bonus and limited leverage. I think its also worth noting Tatusko’s production in a swing-man role; quite similarly to his trade-mate Tanner Roark, he continues to produce at an advanced/MLFA age … could he be another “found gold” pitcher in our upper farm system?

We should also note that we have yet to see Brad Meyers, who remains on the D/L and has only thrown about 6 professional innings since 2011.

Bullpen Notables

The Syracuse bullpen has seen plenty of traffic to and from the majors: Aaron Barrett started in the majors and has seen time in Syracuse. Ryan Mattheus and Xavier Cedeno have already both been up and back. Nobody in the pen has much more than about 10 innings pitched, so we won’t make too many rash judgements. So far Christian Garcia looks decent; his 12/2 K/BB ratio in 10 innings is promising but he currently sits on the D/L with an unspecified injury. Meanwhile Daniel Stange has struggled with his control; he has 10 walks in 12 innings. We’ll talk more about bullpen guys deeper into the season.

Most Deserving of a promotion: Hill and perhaps Laffey, both of whom are pitching dominantly right now. But neither are 40-man guys, and that (especially for Laffey) hurts him. Laffey as a starter in AAA has been great, but he might be more useful as a lefty-match up guy. Cedeno has been getting the MLB-bullpen covering call-ups but if Laffey was on the 40-man instead, it probably would have been him instead.

Most in Jeopardy of a demotion/release: Poveda for sure; his cash-only acquisition isn’t looking promising considering that a rotation spot is needed soon for Jordan. Roenicke needs a couple of good outings to get his numbers up; with only 12 innings its hard to pass too harsh a judgement. But, with very little push from the current AA rotation, its hard to see a reason why the organization needs to make a move anytime soon (see the next section for more).

AA/Harrisburg:

Pitcher

Start Trend Line

W/L

ERA

Whip

FIP

K/BB Ratio

# of innings

Apps/Starts

Schwartz

F,F,B+,F,D+

0-4

6.08

1.99

5.1

15/10

23.2

5/5

Rivero

D-,B,B-,F,B+

1-4

5.06

1.69

4.85

13/9

21.1

5/5

Gilliam

F,B-,D,A

0-0

5.09

1.36

6.05

13/9

17.2

5/4

Purke

F,D,F,F

0-5

9.30

2.11

6.55

14/13

20.1

5/5

Cole

B-,A,D,F

2-1

3.63

1.57

2.82

16/4

22.1

5/5

Dupra

B+

1-0

0.00

0.9

4.35

3/3

3.1

1/0

Perry

F -> d/l

0-0

5.63

1.5

3.07

6/3

8

5/0

Jackson

A -> promoted

0-0

0.00

0.52

2.01

7/0

7.2

5/0

Bates

B

0-0

5.68

1.66

2.97

12.2

6/0

Rotation Discussion:

Well, there’s not much joy in Harrisburg in terms of the rotation right now. The team is already 7.5 games out of first and is in dead last in the Eastern League. Four of the five starters in Harrisburg are, well, just awful right now. I should note that the stats above do include one extra start for Matthew Purke; it didn’t help his cause. Newly acquired Felipe Rivero has not acclimated well to Harrisburg, to say the least. Blake Schwartz has not adjusted well to the jump to AA after his excellent season in Potomac last year. The one bright spot seems to be A.J. Cole by ERA/FIP, but he’s still putting an awful lot of people on base (1.57 whip).

Sammy Solis remains on the AA D/L, along with a handful of other long-serving names in this organization (Paul Demny, Rafael Martin and Pat Lehman).

Bullpen Notables

Zach Jackson already earned his promotion via 7 scoreless innings, though to be fair he really should have been in AAA to start (he’s a veteran minor leaguer and has been pitching at the AAA level for nearly a decade). Matt Grace is faring well thus far, as is Richie Mirowski, while Gabriel Alfaro needs to get his control under control (he’s got 9 walks in 11 1/3 innings).

Most Deserving of a promotion: none of these guys are pushing for a promotion, now that Jackson is back in AAA where he belongs.

Most in Jeopardy of a demotion/release: You have to think that Purke may be in jeopardy of being coverted to relief at this point. Alfaro was a MLFA signing out of the Mexican league and may not be long for the organization if he keeps pitching this badly. Gilliam was a throw-in to the Gio Gonzalez trade and is old for the level; he may get pushed out if someone from Potomac makes a case for promotion (which, thankfully for him, has yet to be the case; read on).

High-A/Potomac

Pitcher

Start Trend Line

W/L

ERA

Whip

FIP

K/BB Ratio

# of innings

Apps/Starts

Rauh

B-,F-,C+,C-

1-1

4.43

1.57

4

15/7

20.1

5/4

Rpena

F,D,F/inc,A-,A-

2-0

6.43

1.48

5.71

5/8

21

5/5

Mooneyham

F,C-,A-,D/short,B-

2-1

3.32

1.63

6.71

7/19

19

5/4

Bacus

A+,A+,A (into rotation for Encarnacion)

1-1

2.08

0.69

4.7

15/3

17.1

6/0

Simms

(newly promoted; no Apr starts)

Dickson

B+,F,B+,A

0-2

6.23

1.38

5.37

21/7

21.3

7/0

Encarnacion

C+,B,F,D- ->d/l

1-2

4.00

1.94

5.88

14/12

18

4/4

Lee

F-,F-,D,A -> d/l

0-2

10.05

1.74

2.33

23/8

14.1

5/4

Fister

B (rehab)

0-0

0.00

1.5

2.16

3/0

4

1/1

Dupra

A+,B+,A,A-> promoted

3-0

0.53

0.71

1.31

23/1

17

5/0

Rotation Discussion:

Potomac is sitting in 1st place easily with the rest of its division struggling so far. But Its hard to see how they’re doing it with a rotation putting up numbers like this. The only guy getting starts for Potomac in April with a respectable/impressive FIP was Nick Lee, and he’s on the D/L. But even Lee’s numbers look completely weird: he had a 10 (ten!) ERA in his 14 innings, but an astounding 23 ks in 14 innings. His numbers are completely spiked by two successive awful outings and he currently sits on the D/L with an unspecified but hopefully short-term injury. Dakota Bacus earned his way into the rotation with a series of excellent long-relief outings; he replaces the also-injured opening day rotation starter Pedro Encarnacion, who himself struggled with his control (12 walks in 18 innings) before hitting the D/L. Otherwise there’s not much notable in the Potomac rotation to talk about: Brett Mooneyham‘s advanced numbers show just how bad he’s really pitched; he currently has a 7/19 K/BB ratio in 19 innings. He has more than twice the number of walks as he has strikeouts! That’s not a recipe for success long-term.

Kylin Turnbull remains on the Hagerstown D/L, continuing to be a complete 2011 draft-day disappointment.

Bullpen Notables

The best reliever in Potomac thus far this season has already been bumped up; Brian Dupra posted a nifty 23/1 K/BB ratio and earned his way to AA. Robert Benincasa already has 5 saves with good numbers. Derek Self has great numbers and has given up just three base-runners in 10 innings thus far. So the Nats are getting some great relief. Gilberto Mendez hasn’t walked a guy yet and is one of the youngest guys in the league, so he’s clearly holding his own after posting a 0.91 ERA in low-A last year.

Most Deserving of a promotion: Outside of Dupra, its hard to pinpoint someone that really is pushing for a promotion out of this squad right now. Bacus is pitching well but he’s just got a month of high-A experience; lets see how he does for a half season. I could see the late-inning crew of Self, Benincasa and Bryan Harper possibly getting moved up sooner than later. But none of the starters really are making a case for promotion right now.

Most in Jeopardy of a demotion/release: Clearly for me the guy in trouble is Mooneyham; you just can’t be walking that many guys and have as little swing-and-miss capabilities to counter-balance your wildness. Before his injury, Encarnacion was struggling with his command too; I can see him back in low-A. Lastly Ronald Pena just is not fooling anybody right now; he’s got just 5 Ks in 20 innings and would be in more jeopardy if there weren’t other candidates ahead of him to replace at this point.

Low-A/Hagerstown

Pitcher

Start Trend Line

W/L

ERA

Whip

FIP

K/BB Ratio

# of innings

Apps/Starts

Pivetta

A,A-,F,F,B+

3-2

4.57

1.48

4.36

13/10

21.2

5/5

Voth

A,D,A-,D/short

0-2

2.91

1.38

2.7

26/10

21.1

5/5

Giolito

D-,A+,A,C-,C-

1-0

2.95

1.22

3.62

24/11

21.1

5/5

Anderson

A,A+,F,D-

3-0

6.33

1.36

4.98

13/6

21.1

5/3

Johansen

B,B+,F,C-

2-0

5.21

1.53

3.84

17/11

19

4/4

Suero

D,A,B,A

3-0

1.20

0.88

3.53

13/2

21.2

5/0

Cooper

B,A+,D

2-0

2.81

1.31

2.57

11/1

16

5/0

Jthomas

A+,A-

1-2

2.53

1.22

4.51

4/5

10.2

5/0

Ullmann

B+

0-0

0.00

0.8

2.67

9/2

10

4/0

Hollins

A-

2-0

4.35

1.74

3.86

9/7

10.1

8/0

Silvestre

B+,inc (inj)->d/l

0-0

3.00

1.33

2.24

7/2

6

2/2

Simms

A,A,A,A+->promoted

0-0

0.98

0.82

2.05

20/2

18.1

5/0

Spann

B+,A-,B+,B+->promoted

2-0

1.20

1.13

2.77

15/4

15

4/0

Rotation Discussion:

Hagerstown is taking the South Atlantic league by storm, leading its division by 5.5 games already. And they’re getting some great pitching. The team clearly seems to be doing “combo starts” with some of its guys: that’s why someone like Wander Suero has as many IP as the 5 guys in the “rotation.” So, when it comes to judging starts nearly the entire staff in Hagerstown has “start length” outings to assign grades to. I like what I see out of Austin Voth so far, and Lucas Giolito is clearly holding his own in full-season ball (both these guys feature more than a K/inning, which is great to see especially out of the undersized Voth). Meanwhile we’re seeing some worrying wildness out of Jake Johansen, which will not quell the “he’s too big to be a starter so he’s destined for the bullpen” crowd.

Bullpen Notables

John Simms (11th rounder in 2012) and Matthew Spann (booty for the team’s sticking its nose into the David DeJesus waiver situation last year) have both already forced promotions thanks to excellent results. Otherwise there really isn’t much in the way of a traditional “bullpen” in Hagerstown to talk about.

Most Deserving of a promotion: I’d say Voth and Jake Walsh, who older guys who are mowing guys down in Low-A and may need to be challenged by better/older hitters.

Most in Jeopardy of a demotion: One of the older guys on this staff (Dixon Anderson) isn’t putting up the numbers he needs to be putting up as a college senior 2011 draftee in low-A. Youngster Nicholas Pivetta is also struggling with the jump to full-season ball out of JuCo and may be dumped back to XST at some point. But it should also be said that we’re kind of squinting for bad performances out of the Low-A squad; both these guys’ numbers are better than practically anyone in AA right now.

Top Prospect Review

From a trending perspective for our top 10 prospect arms (in rough order of their typical rankings on prospect lists):

Giolito is succeeding so far, though isn’t as dominant yet to be pushing for a promotion to High-A

Cole is holding his own and is the best AA starter right now, but again isn’t entirely pushing for a AAA promotion just quite yet.

Solis has yet to appear thanks to a late spring training injury.

Rivero has really struggled since his arrival

Johansen has shown some wildness and not as much swing-and-miss stuff as he did in short-season ball.

Purke has been awful and it may be time to move him to the Pen.

Voth has been excellent and is probably the closest to a promotion.

Barrett and Treinien have both earned promotions to provide MLB cover, and when in AAA have been effective

Jefry Rodriguez is in XST and didn’t make a full-season team.

Conclusions:

So far, I must say i’m a bit disappointed in the performance of the AA squad, but its great to see the promise of the Low-A squad. I’m slightly worried about how our closer-to-the-majors top prospect arms are looking; lets re-visit in a month and see how it looks.

Taylor Hill is one of the younger hurlers in AAA. Photo via milb.com/Potomac Nats official

Age Appropriateness by minor league level is a topic I come back to year after year. Click here for this analysis in 2011, and then here for the same analysis for 2013 (I must have been really busy in April of 2012 to have missed out on such fun analysis).

I won’t repeat a ton of the build-up to this topic; see last year’s post for a ton of rule-of-thumb discussions and what not. Basically the point of this post is to talk about the average/median ages of pitchers in the various full season minor league levels, then take a look at our four full-season affiliate rosters to see how our guys rank. I’m very much of the belief that age matters in prospects, and that it should be taken into consideration when looking at a guy’s performance.

Data Taxonomy: I’ve taken every pitcher on every team’s roster in each of the four leagues that the Nats have farm teams in (AAA = International, AA = Eastern, High-A = Carolina, Low-A = South Atlantic), put them into a spreadsheet, calculated their ages at the end of this season (9/1/14) and then calculated the four quartile figures in terms of age. I only used pitchers in our leagues as opposed to the entire level across all of baseball thinking that different leagues may have different needs (I’m thinking how the California League and the Pacific Coast League has so many hitters parks and thus the pitchers may linger there longer, skewing the numbers). I also standardized the numbers to be at the end of the season as opposed to the beginning, so that people can talk about a player’s “Age 25 season” for example. I’ve labeled the four quartiles as follows: “Really Young” means the lowest quartile or youngest 25% of players, “Young” means the 2nd quartile or 25-50%, “Old” means the 3rd quartile or 50-75% range, and “Really Old” means anyone in the 75th quartile or above for the league.

First, a look at how these age rankings have fared over the past few years:

Age Appropriate Matrix 2011-2014

2011

AAA

AA

High-A

Low-A

Really Young

25.54 or younger

24.44 or younger

22.65 or younger

21.88 or younger

Young

25.54 – 26.93

24.44 – 25.37

22.65 – 23.83

21.88 – 22.84

Old

26.93 – 28.79

25.37 – 26.65

23.83 – 24.77

22.84 – 23.65

Really Old

28.79 or older

26.65 or older

24.77 or older

23.65 or older

2013

AAA

AA

High-A

Low-A

Really Young

25.91 or younger

24.02 or younger

23.08 or younger

21.69 or younger

Young

25.92 – 27.75

24.02 – 25.17

23.08 – 24.00

21.69 – 22.66

Old

27.75 – 30.35

25.17 – 26.84

24.00 – 24.91

22.66 – 23.39

Really Old

30.35 or older

26.84 or older

24.91 or older

23.39 or older

2014

AAA

AA

High-A

Low-A

Really Young

25.85 or younger

24.13 or younger

22.74 or younger

21.84 or younger

Young

25.86 – 27.47

24.14 – 25.27

22-74 – 23.63

21.84 – 22.65

Old

27.47 – 29.58

25.27 – 26.77

23.63 – 24.53

22.65 – 23.69

Really Old

29.58 or older

26.78 or older

24.53 or older

23.70 or older

At a high level:

AAA’s median age has risen from 2011, but 2014’s teams are getting slightly younger; all these threshold ages are slightly below 2013’s numbers.

AA is more or less the same; the median age only differs by 1/10th of a year from last year

High A: is getting younger; its threshold ages are all about a half a year or more younger this year

Low A seems about the same; its median age is identical to last year’s.

Here’s a look at the Nationals’ four full season minor league pitching staffs, with the ages listed and the “age appropriate” label given. All rosters are as of 4/18/14.

AAA Syracuse

Team

First Name

Last Name

DOB

Age as of 9/1/14

Age Status

Syracuse (Wash)

Aaron

Barrett

1/2/1988

26.66

Young

Syracuse (Wash)

Xavier

Cedeno

8/26/1986

28.02

Old

Syracuse (Wash)

Manny

Delcarmen

2/16/1982

32.54

Really Old

Syracuse (Wash)

Christian

Garcia

8/24/1985

29.02

Old

Syracuse (Wash)

Taylor

Hill

3/12/1989

25.47

Really Young

Syracuse (Wash)

Aaron

Laffey

4/15/1985

29.38

Old

Syracuse (Wash)

Warner

Madrigal

3/21/1984

30.45

Really Old

Syracuse (Wash)

Ryan

Mattheus

11/10/1983

30.81

Really Old

Syracuse (Wash)

Brad

Meyers

9/13/1985

28.97

Old

Syracuse (Wash)

Omar

Poveda

9/28/1987

26.93

Young

Syracuse (Wash)

Tyler

Robertson

12/23/1987

26.69

Young

Syracuse (Wash)

Josh

Roenicke

8/4/1982

32.08

Really Old

Syracuse (Wash)

Danny

Rosenbaum

10/10/1987

26.89

Young

Syracuse (Wash)

Daniel

Stange

12/22/1985

28.69

Old

Syracuse (Wash)

Ryan

Tatusko

3/27/1985

29.43

Old

Discussion: Even by AAA standards as a “spare parts” league, our AAA squad is pretty old. We have four guys in their 30s, only one of which is on our 40-man roster (Ryan Mattheus). Our youngest guy in AAA may also be the most surprising pitcher to make this squad; Taylor Hill. This squad will just get older once Michael Gonzalez makes his way to upstate New York (which has already happened inbetween the time of this data capture and the time of this post).

Oldest Guy in the International League: Fairfax’s own Shawn Camp, a 10 year MLB veteran who signed on with Philly as a MLFA last off-season and looks like he may be back and forth between Lehigh Valley and Philadelphia all year. Also amongst the old crowd in the International league are interesting names from the past, including Johan Santana, and a few former Nats in Luis Ayala, Chien-Ming Wang and Yunesky Maya (who signed on with Atlanta for 2014).

Youngest Guy in the International League: Former Nat Robbie Ray, who will not turn 23 until after season’s end. Side note on Ray: i was listening to a Jonah Keri podcast where a guest was openly questioning the Doug Fister trade, now that Fister’s out with an injury and Ray’s fast tracking his way to a very early majors appointment. Nothing nefarious suggested (as in, the Tigers knew that Fister was damaged goods), but he also said he was at about a “0%” surprise factor when Fister got hurt this spring. Interesting.

A couple of other very young guys in this league include some big-time pitching prospects: Marcus Strohman for Toronto, Trevor Bauer for Cleveland and Kevin Gausman for Baltimore.

Percentage of International League pitchers on MLB 40-man rosters: 36.95%, quite a bit higher than last year. Four of Syracuse’ 15 pitchers are on the 40-man and two of them (Aaron Barrett and Xavier Cedeno) have already made the trips up and back to and from the majors this month. Of course, the Nats have already shuffled around these two and Blake Treinen quite a bit and its just a few weeks into the season.

AA Harrisburg

Team

First Name

Last Name

DOB

Age as of 9/1/14

Age Status

Harrisburg (Wash)

Gabriel

Alfaro

6/14/1983

31.22

Really Old

Harrisburg (Wash)

Colin

Bates

3/10/1988

26.48

Old

Harrisburg (Wash)

A.J.

Cole

1/5/1992

22.66

Really Young

Harrisburg (Wash)

Paul

Demny

8/3/1989

25.08

Young

Harrisburg (Wash)

Robert

Gilliam

11/29/1987

26.76

Old

Harrisburg (Wash)

Matt

Grace

12/14/1988

25.71

Old

Harrisburg (Wash)

Tyler

Herron

8/5/1986

28.07

Really Old

Harrisburg (Wash)

Neil

Holland

8/14/1988

26.05

Old

Harrisburg (Wash)

Zach

Jackson

5/13/1983

31.30

Really Old

Harrisburg (Wash)

Pat

Lehman

10/18/1986

27.87

Really Old

Harrisburg (Wash)

Rafael

Martin

5/16/1984

30.29

Really Old

Harrisburg (Wash)

Richie

Mirowski

4/30/1989

25.34

Old

Harrisburg (Wash)

Ryan

Perry

2/13/1987

27.55

Really Old

Harrisburg (Wash)

Matt

Purke

7/17/1990

24.13

Really Young

Harrisburg (Wash)

Felipe

Rivero

7/5/1991

23.16

Really Young

Harrisburg (Wash)

Blake

Schwartz

10/9/1989

24.90

Young

Harrisburg (Wash)

Sammy

Solis

8/10/1988

26.06

Old

Discussion: As with Syracuse, our Harrisburg squad is very old; 12 of the 17 pitchers on the squad are above the median age for the league, and 6 of them are in the oldest quartile. Our three youngest hurlers are (arguably) our three most important arms in AA: A.J. Cole, Felipe Rivero and Matt Purke (with apologies to Sammy Solis, who lists as an “older” guy thanks to his losing a year to TJ surgery). It seems to me like Harrisburg is populated with hangers-on; that the bullpen is filled with org arms.

Oldest Guy in the Eastern League: Minnesota’s Matt Guerrier, who was traded in the final year of his contract last summer but couldn’t find a 40-man job and signed back on with the team he spent the early part of his career with. His placement in AA was temporary; he’s already back with AAA. Ironically the 2nd oldest player in the Eastern league is also on Minnesota’s team: Virgil Vasquez, who is in his 12th pro season with just a handful of major league appearances over that time and who came back into affiliated ball after two seasons of indy league.

Youngest Guy in the Eastern League: San Francisco’s Adalberto Mejia, a lefty starter prospect who jumped straight from the DSL to low-A and has climbed steadily since. Interestingly, the six youngest players in the league all play for either the San Francisco or Baltimore franchises, including Zach Davies and Dylan Bundy for Bowie.

Percentage of Eastern League pitchers on MLB 40-man rosters: just 5.33% (9 of 169), down from last year’s 8.24%. Interestingly 3 of those total of 9 are Nats farmhands, including one of the last remnants of the now-extinct draft-day MLB deal in Purke.

High-A Potomac

Team

First Name

Last Name

DOB

Age as of 9/1/14

Age Status

Potomac (Wash)

Dakota

Bacus

4/2/1991

23.42

Young

Potomac (Wash)

Robert

Benincasa

9/5/1990

23.99

Old

Potomac (Wash)

Ian

Dickson

9/16/1990

23.96

Old

Potomac (Wash)

Brian

Dupra

12/15/1988

25.71

Really Old

Potomac (Wash)

Pedro

Encarnacion

6/26/1991

23.18

Young

Potomac (Wash)

Bryan

Harper

12/29/1989

24.67

Really Old

Potomac (Wash)

Travis

Henke

7/9/1988

26.15

Really Old

Potomac (Wash)

Nick

Lee

1/13/1991

23.63

Young

Potomac (Wash)

Gilberto

Mendez

11/17/1992

21.79

Really Young

Potomac (Wash)

Brett

Mooneyham

1/24/1990

24.60

Really Old

Potomac (Wash)

Ronald

Pena

9/19/1991

22.95

Young

Potomac (Wash)

Brian

Rauh

7/23/1991

23.11

Young

Potomac (Wash)

Derek

Self

1/14/1990

24.63

Really Old

Discussion: Do you sense a trend? Five of Potomac’s 13 arms are “Really Old” for the league. Thankfully four of our 5 starters here are “young” for the league right now. The only exception is Brett Mooneyham, who is now “really old” for high-A and yet is still scuffling along.

Oldest Guy in the Carolina League: Baltimore’s Eunchul Choi, a 30-yr old South Korean pitcher who Baltimore signed as a MLFA three off-seasons ago and who apparently has yet to throw a professional inning.

Youngest Guy in the Carolina League: Atlanta’s Lucas Sims, who (no surprise) was the youngest player in the South Atlantic league when we did this analysis last year. All he did in 2013 was go 12-4 with 134 K’s in 116 innings as the youngest guy in the league. It looks like Atlanta may have yet another young, big-time arm in its rotation in a couple of years.

Percentage of Carolina League pitchers on MLB 40-man rosters: 0%. Now that teams are prevented from signing draftees to MLB deals, the odds of ever seeing a non-rehabbing 40-man player below AA seem to be slim.

Low-A Hagerstown

Team

First Name

Last Name

DOB

Age as of 9/1/14

Age Status

Hagerstown (Wash)

Dixon

Anderson

7/2/1989

25.17

Really Old

Hagerstown (Wash)

Andrew

Cooper

6/27/1992

22.18

Young

Hagerstown (Wash)

Cody

Davis

7/21/1990

24.11

Really Old

Hagerstown (Wash)

Wirkin

Estevez

3/15/1992

22.46

Young

Hagerstown (Wash)

Lucas

Giolito

7/14/1994

20.13

Really Young

Hagerstown (Wash)

L.J.

Hollins

7/31/1991

23.09

Old

Hagerstown (Wash)

Jake

Johansen

1/23/1991

23.61

Old

Hagerstown (Wash)

Nick

Pivetta

2/14/1993

21.54

Really Young

Hagerstown (Wash)

Hector

Silvestre

12/14/1992

21.71

Really Young

Hagerstown (Wash)

John

Simms

1/17/1992

22.62

Young

Hagerstown (Wash)

Matthew

Spann

2/17/1991

23.54

Old

Hagerstown (Wash)

Wander

Suero

9/15/1991

22.96

Old

Hagerstown (Wash)

Justin

Thomas

10/21/1990

23.86

Really Old

Hagerstown (Wash)

Kylin

Turnbull

9/12/1989

24.97

Really Old

Hagerstown (Wash)

Ryan

Ullmann

8/12/1991

23.06

Old

Hagerstown (Wash)

Austin

Voth

6/26/1992

22.18

Young

Hagerstown (Wash)

Jake

Walsh

1/1/1991

23.67

Old

Discussion: Hagerstown’s squad isn’t quite as “old” as I thought it’d be, thanks to a couple of really young starters being on the squad (Lucas Giolito and Nick Pivetta). But, the team also has two of the 10 oldest players in the league in Dixon Anderson and Kylin Turnbull. Anderson can be excused somewhat, since he lost time to injury, but he also is repeating low-A and should have been on Potomac’s squad (in this humble opinion). Maybe he will be soon thanks to the spate of injuries in Potomac. Meanwhile Turnbull looks like he may be a draft bust; he hasn’t been able to perform above low-A despite his draft-day pedigree.

Oldest Guy in the South Atlantic League: New York’s Conor Mullee, who hails from Ashburn, attended Broad Run HS and was plucked out of a small college (St. Peters University). But interesting he was a hitter in college and then immediately switched to pitching. He blew out his arm and missed all of 2011 after TJ surgery … then missed all of 2013 as well. He currently sits on Charleston’s 7-day D/L as the oldest guy in the league by 6 months.

Youngest Guy in the South Atlantic League: Texas’ Akeem Bostick, a 2nd round pick in 2013 out of a South Carolina high school who more than held his own in the Arizona rookie league. Also amongst the youngsters in the Sally league are Baltimore’s big-time prospect Hunter Harvey and our own Giolito.

Percentage of South Atlantic League pitchers on MLB 40-man rosters: 0%.

Conclusion:

I think its safe to say that the Nats draft strategy of focusing primarily on college-age arms is starting to be seen; our pitching squads are filled with “older” guys. But interestingly these older arms seem to mostly be in the bullpens, while our starting corps are by and large filled with “younger” arms relative to their league-wide colleagues.